[hurt1time_not2]

I have been in a relationship with a man for 5 years now. I consider him my ‘husband’ (by common law) in my heart & soul and I need to overcome his abusive conditioning of making me his so i can leave the relationship and be ok. I’m sorry this is long – but its important to me to tell my story so you understand where i am, my life depends on it! Thank you for your time.
My husband and I got together under strange circumstances, i was living in my car (which i no longer have since he took it apart in a million pieces 4 years into our relationship, just sayin’ why i lost it)…. anyway i had got attacked by someone he knew and beat up/robbed. He met me for dinner, saw the bruises and knots on my head, felt bad and thought i was ‘a hottie’ So he offered me a place to stay at his house. i was wary as any woman should be at first but he was and is a beautiful man, very charming, and i was very attracted to him first of all, and i needed a place to go.I took him up on it, to get off the streets, specifying my conditions, such as separate rooms etc, not sex-for-rent or something like that – he was totally agreeable, in fact, he worked out of town so i’d only see him twice a month for a few days over the weekends. i had the place to myself! It was great, and our weekends were awesome together. i was really happy and thought it was too good to be true but possibly leading to romance that may actually pan out this time.
Then 3 months in, i began looking for a job to get my act together and he went left on me. He quit his job, put locks on my door so i had to ask him for the key to my own room, locked my car in the backyard, even nailed the doors shut when he’d leave so i couldn’t move out. It was awful, and i hated him, even snuck out and got my own apartment TWICE, tll he found me broke in one, got a job w/the complex at the other, and refused to leave.i was a prisoner and left every other week it seemed but had no place to go permanently, shelters wouldn’t take me w/my dog (he got me to keep me there) – anyhow, so after a year and half i finally committed to the relationship and offered my loyalty and whole true self to him and only him. I either thought it would make him change once he knew i wouldn’t leave… or i couldn’t leave so long it was easier not to fight it. Whatever it was, thats what I did, and lived in isolation for 3 more years, to the point that his control was so tight, he installed the lights so high i’d have to ask him to turn them on for me, otherwise he kept it completely dark (im night blind) and he’d rearrange the furniture so i’d trip or run into things in the dark if I tried to leave. He kept the food in a small fridge in his room by his bed (sold our regular fridge), so i’d have to go by him to eat a snack at night. If I woke him he was a monster, terrifying me with his yelling and threats til I curled in a ball crying or pull my own hair out at first. After the few years tho i toughened up til finally he hit me for the first time after 3 years, and i went to a shelter – but when released had to go back and woke him trying to get my phone out from under his bed and he flew from the laying down position up into a right hook punch across my jaw for “trying to take the last cigarette” – he was mistaken – not his fault, he was asleep. I still am terrified of waking anyone up for any reason, no matter who they are or even if they ask me to….to my own demise (won’t move to go to the bathroom or leave if it may wake someone, i’ll wait, staring at the cieling trying to not breathe too loud).
We haven’t lived together in almost 2 years (1 yr and 11 months) and i’m just as programmed as i was the day he tried to kill himself because of me, after which time i was at his hospital bedside & he was in a coma, that traumatized the hell out of me. he lived, but before he woke from the coma his family raised a stink that it was my fault if he died, and asked the hospital to bar me from info on him, and so i lived for almost 2 months not knowing if he was dead or alive. He had us living in an abandoned house for 3 years, he rebuilt it, it was decent, you’d never know it wasn’t ours… til you lived there, he had everything rigged to his way – so when he wasn’t there i couldn’t turn on lights, get hot water, or anything and within 2 weeks had a major house fire, which took out all but one uninsulated room w/o electricity, and it was december 17degrees outside, he was maybe dead, maybe alive, and my father (my only family) fell ill, and was in hospice, and in the 3 months that followed i was in a car accident that left me in a wheel chair, our vehicle had been stolen from the grocery story and not found, i was robbed at gunpoint lost my ID & credit cards, purse & phone, my father died, and i was facing my first criminal charge w/probation, having court & fines etc, in a wheelchair,no car, in one room of this house alone w/o power or hot water & no ID, no money, no family, and he was gone because he loved me??? he did it because he DIED FOR ME? is what he eventually said. at the time i was so beat down and desperate & alone – i sold his stuff (everything) to pay an electrician to fix the house wiring, and eventually moved to a friends’ house – until my dad died… i went back to the house after that. Well, he lived, and really abandoned me after his hospitalization, having to go to rehab, and a halfway house, because i wouldn’t let him come home without counseling or some mental help for trying to die -i was angry and scared cuz i’d sold his stuff. .. but i didn’t even know if he was dead when i did that – i had to pay the electrician and survive.
Even tho he didn’t live w/me he kept close tabs, threatened any guys i talked to or spent time around, showed up attacking me until my roommate even went and got a hammer after him to make him stop one night. So i was definitely his property still despite the separation. Everyone saw how abusive it really was, having previously only been his friend, not really knowing me, he’d made me out to be the psychotic wife he dealt with at home, getting sympathy from them. Now they saw it wasn’t true. He saw his friends become my friends, leaving him behind, without any sympathy for him and his suicide attempt. He acted very erratically. Then, The **night before my dad’s funeral, i get text messages from some other woman with pictures of him and her naked. I missed the funeral since he was my ride. I lost my place to stay, and ended up literally on the streets by then, after trying to go back to the house, but the electricity was off completely & it was uninhabitable. I slept under a freeway while he was cozy in a halfway house w/3 meals a day provided to him, and he had been working, but refused to help me at all. He would tell me “whats wrong with you? do you think i’m gonna risk being put on the streets too?” when i’d call for help. even tho i knew he’d be that way, i’d still call him, crying, turning to him, after all, for four years almost if i wanted a light turned on, i had to ask him to do it. when he’d be mean & turn off the phone i’d be so hurt it felt like my gut was ripped out, and i was like a child on the street lost. Then a year ago i was sexually assaulted under the bridge by homeless men and i freaked out and called 911 & threatened to sit myself in front of the public train if they didn’t help me, and well, i ended up in jail. 6 months.
During that 6 months, he visited weekly, put $50 a week on my books, wrote dozens and dozens of letters, apologizing, promised me futures without all that hurt, acknowledged his wrongs, and was the luckiest husband in the world that i still loved him, i was his perfect wife, and he’s gonna live up to that when i get out. He even promised to keep flowers on my dad’s grave and take me there when i get out (two years after the funeral i still haven’t been there). So, I believed him, to this day read his letters in agony believing them, seeing this future that was waiting – with a new man arisen almost from a grave, but saved now. I got out of jail, he had a motel room paid for for ONE NIGHT w/me, and (this was last march) he got me accepted in the adjacent halfway house to the one he’s in (his is men’s the other is co-ed) and talked my daughter into helping w/my rent for the first month. thats it. but he kept saying its only because he’s gotta finish his probation, pay all the fines/costs before this next march, when he’ll be released, and our new life will begin. We’d spend a day together on the porch or at a park if weather allowed, and he’d give me $5.00 for bus fare, usually, and buy me lunch. He’s sweet as i’d ever want a man to be, sayin’ he’s proud of me, hang in there kiddo – not long now, can’t wait for our new life next year, etc., while i struggle daily for a roof, meals, on the streets again, living with a stranger i met through a friend in another city removed from all i know, without any friends or family, and no phone, i was nearly at a breaking point, but with his praise, i’d keep going. Then i got raped. I am not sure what all took place, because i lost time, woke up a block away from him in a battered condition, traumatized, walking to his halfway house in tears two days after i last recalled anything – and he flipped out on me, and said we were over with, he was through w/me, and he quit talking to me completely, after i told him i thought something really bad had happened to me -i had bruises all over my pelvic area and legs, and i had blacked out, cut up all my clothes, and painted the kitchen at my apt & all the appliances a putrid pink; i had overturned furniture, and wound up at his doorstep lookin’ like a baglady pushing a cart with my bags in it, and i had packed of all things – the paint. A friend of mine had heard my roommate bragging about our “sex party’ he had w/me – that i recall NOTHING about, in the least -not even a flash, but finding all the remnants of some incident happening, I tried to tell him. He completely and utterly shut me out. I wound up so suicidal i checked into a psych facility emergency room and tried to get help there. I had called a girl i knew for a ride, specifically calling her since she had once been brutally raped, i needed a friend to talk to, i figured she’d be able to offer me advice, comfort or something having been there. She did. Then she dropped me off at the hospital, keeping my bags at her apt til i would get out, and finally, i had asked her to call him and tell him where i was. (since he wouldn’t take my calls) and to tell him i love him and he would be put on my family list to talk to the doctors.
A week after I get out, i go pick up my stuff from her apartment and she tells me how she called and told him, and his response was he wanted nothing to do with me, could care less. i was devastated, she was sympathetic said he was a loser, i deserved better, etc., etc., trying to keep me from being suicidal (which I was worst than ever)… because she had just lost a girl friend 3 weeks or so before that to suicide… another one would be too much to bear, she said. Then, through my spidey senses and ultimatly her slips of the tongue it was obvious something else was going on, and come to find out, the night she called to say i was in the MENTAL HOSP AFTER SUICIDAL IDEAS he did, in fact, say he didn’t care, and the two of them, (who were strangers prior to this phone call), got together for sex!!!!! my husband and this ‘friend’ who’d just lost a girl to suicide, who *I* asked for help to keep from suicide, go to hospital with and *I* give his # to for the purpose of informing my HUSBAND and she F*CKED HIM while i was in the psych ward for 4 days!
its UNREAL! In fact, the day i go to pick up my stuff after release – he was inside, hiding. I learned all this when he called me a few weeks later asking ME TO HELP GET RID OF HER because she was stalking him, sayin’ she was pregnant, wanted him to marry her, blahblah – had showed up at his work and the halfway house, “crazier than you are honey” he said – so i complied, texting her tellin’ her to backoff, and got voicemails where she described the sex but, more hurtfully, the things he told her – about me – like that i didn’t cook for him (he kept the food under his lock & key in his room back then – how could I? plus we had no kitchen in that house – or I would have)… or that he was ashamed of my haircut (short since jail not long), and my sexual preferences in bed were too ‘freaky’ for him he had only been with blahblah people in his life – i wasn’t ‘normal’ stuff that she wouldn’t have known to say if he hadn’t really said it, probably in pillow talk. that hurt worse to hear than the sex they had. now he wanted ME to get RID of HER? i found his suffering somewhat humorous and let the thing go cuz more times i called or texted her, more crazy she’d respond with hurtful things he said about me. At first he was adament that now he’s decided he wants NO GIRL, NO relationship, at all, just be left alone, then once i tried reversing the way i acted, and not called him. He called me. He misses me. Checking on me. But now we almost have nothing to say to eachother. I just cry. He says stop crying. I cry harder.
He won’t say I love you, anymore. All our plans are up in the air i guess, I don’t know, he says he’s not sure yet how he’ll feel. He cancelled a weekend i invited him to come visit, but said he’d go to a concert w/me to see a band that plays ‘our song’ – maybe – if i get the tickets. i can’t afford them. its been two months now since i saw him that day i was raped. not since. i’ve resigned to the hurt, cried, alot, isolated, not left the house, for weeks at a time, or even my bed if possible. read his letters, wondering why the promises then when i was in jail? why f*ck w/me like that? i don’t get it. just to abandone me, or need me, or love me, or not, i don’t know. At first i didn’t know how to live w/o him, just his voice once a week on the phone, even if he yelled at me and called me names was enough to comfort me, rather than silence, which made me wanna die. Now, i’m numb. i still call him but i dont want to because he said he won’t talk about the 4 days with her again – now that she’s leaving him alone, he wants to forget about her – so i can’t tell him how hurt i am by the things he said to her – about us, and me. so i’m angry. angry enough to still call but not know what to say, just cry.
how do i convince myself i dont need him…? something goes wrong, he’s my first instinct to turn to – even knowing it won’t help at all to turn to him… why would he spend 5 years securing me as his property to just suddenly flip script and leave me abandoned cold and alone high and dry knowing i had nobody else to turn to, knowing i’d just lost my father, been raped and in jail and living under a freeway while he has his needs met. . . i still remained loyal and he totally rejects me… why do i still try? or feel like i love him? how do i change that so i can move on and learn to love again – right now i’m terrified to meet anyone new, still feel like i’m his, for one, and for two, dont wanna be hurt again, invest time in someone else now, starting over reintroducing myself, as – what – a broken girl now with nothing. i wasn’t that way when he found me, but am now. i can’t start over. What do i do? Thank you for reading, i know it was long. I needed to share. Sincerely, Maryam

[April Mașini, your AskApril]

You’ve had some terrible things happen to you, but I think you’ve got some mental illness going on and you need help that I can’t give you. You’re the only one who can decide to get the help you need. But you have to stop being a victim and start taking charge of the little parts of your life that you do have control over. 😉

I also think you’re not being straight with me about your own criminal record — it seems like you’ve been arrested for several incidents, and while the brutality and homelessness you’ve suffered is awful, you have to turn things around by taking charge of what you can take charge of. Being honest is a step towards taking back control. 🙂

This man who is abusive to you is NOT your husband, even though you call him such. You don’t have to stay with him, and I suggest you cut off contact. He’s not good for you, and there is no reason for you to continue to spend time with him or take his calls or contact. If you get him out of your life, you’ll be one small step closer to a better life. Small steps — in the right direction — will get you where you need to go!

Please follow me @AskAprilcom on Twitter and on Facebook at this link: [url][/url].

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