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Hi Shaking: Most every reader can easily see
that your husband and his father are
addicted to abuse; what many might not
easily see is that you are equally addicted
to abusing and to being abused—even worse—to
setting it up for your child to be abused.
Taking one incident out of context of your
entire relationship is irresponsible. This
was not the first time you experienced abuse
with either of them. How
you handled (created space for) the very
first incident caused (created space for)
all the rest. It could be said that
you are conducting a clever "sting"
operation, gathering proof that he is more
abusive than you, perhaps unconsciously
setting it up to have him incarcerated.
Just as you had no choice other than to
react as you "perhaps shouldn't have" (it's
called abuse), neither did he have a
choice.
Of all the men in the world it's no accident
that you attracted and seduced someone
equally addicted to abuse to marry you. You
needed to do it so that you could see
yourself in him. I say equally in
reference to Newton's Third Law of Motion .
. . "for every action there's an equal
and opposite reaction." The common fallacy
is that physical abuse is worse, or that it
hurts more, than verbal, non-verbal,
psychic, or psychological abuse. In
relationship abuse there are no "victims" or
"bullies" only consenting sparring partners,
both blaming the other for starting it.
Just because you can't see how you've been
abusing him doesn't mean that you haven't.
You've heard
snake-bite stories,
that a rattlesnake's bite
can be deadly. You know that if you choose to put
your hand in its space you'll cause the
snake to bite you. The snake has no choice.
Intruding into a snake's space (simply
trying to hang out in its den) invites the
snake to do what it's programmed to do, to
angrily defend its reality. Neither does
your husband have any choice. He has been
programmed to strike out when he's upset.
His reality is that there is something wrong
with you and your child; he'll violently
defend that position, even seeking agreement
from his father, the one who trained him to
blame. You know this.
You've always known this. Books and
movies throughout life have advised against
dating such a man, especially a second time.
You're not stupid. You knew he behaved
rudely, crudely, and abusively. If you look
back you can recall he did something on your
very first date that was a warning. I'm
guessing that a parent or best friend
advised against dating or marrying him.
Note:
One thing he sees wrong with you is that you
serve as a mirror; when he looks at you he
sees what he disrespects about himself. He
punishes you to the degree he believes he
"should" be punished for life's
perpetrations.
Now here's the shocker. You don't operate
from choice. You lost your ability to choose
years ago. You have gone unconscious. No
conscious woman would submit herself or her
child to the possibilities of such behavior
for even five more minutes. Some
readers will assume that when you read this
you'll leave him just to prove that you have
a choice. Not so. You can't and won't leave
until it gets real bad. However, you're not
to blame, it's not your fault; you too are
programmed to abuse and to be abused.
Your
parents trained you to attract and marry
someone equally addicted to abuse.
Worse yet, you are programmed to start
fights and lie about who starts them. Not
unlike a bar-room brawler you are a fighter
looking for someone to fight, someone to
find fault with, someone to make wrong,
someone to hit you so that you can blame
them for starting the fight, for being more
abusive than you. You will keep producing
abuse until you tell the truth, that you are
the one who puts herself (her hand) in his
space. It's important to know that up until
reading this reply you have had no choice
whatsoever. It's so bad that you have not
even had the ability to choose to leave,
such is your addiction.
The cycle goes like
this:
-
Cause abuse
-
Think about leaving
-
Plan on leaving
-
Think about your fears about leaving
-
Manufacture a reason to not leave
-
And then go to sleep
-
Wake up and cause abuse
-
Think about leaving.
-
Plan on leaving
-
Think about your fears about leaving
-
Manufacture a reason to not leave
-
And then go to sleep, etc.
Put another way, you've been operating from
the decision to stay married. A decision
murders the alternative. Once you decided to
stay you lost your ability to choose to have
an abuse-free day. After
reading this you'll no longer be able to
tell your son, perhaps through jail bars, "I
didn't know."
You ask for
"guidance" but part of your problem is that
you cannot do what it will take to not have
this in your life anymore. You are so
addicted to abusing and to being abused that
you have no choice other than to continue to
relate with that family. Your unconscious
machinations are such that you will set it
up for Monte to truly hurt you or your son
so that you'll have a "good" reason to call
in the police and social workers who will
then support you in doing what you know you
should do, today—leave.
Advising you
to leave is like advising my cat to not
bring gift-mice into the house. He simply
can't not do it.
You are stuck in a
condition called hopelessness. You can't
even be trusted to do what's right for your
son. Mothers reading your letter, especially
those who have "walked in your shoes,"
silently plead for you to get out, to go to
the police station/Shelter and adamantly
refuse to return to that house except that
the following conditions be met. Most
communities have a free Shelter for women
(and their children).
Both of you
must live alone for a minimum of
six-months and each complete
(separately) 25 sessions of
therapy/counseling. During this time,
neither of you can have any kind
of communication with each other at
all—no messages, no gifts, no letters.
The person who breaks this agreement
automatically adds another six-months to
the estrangement.
Instead, because
you have no choice, you will stay under that
roof, for reasons, (ostensibly for survival
or "love")
and later have to explain to your son,
perhaps through jail bars, why
you submitted him to fear and abuse day
after day. Could it be that you're
unconsciously setting up your son to murder
his father (re: Menendez) because of the
abuse? Witnessing
his father choking his mother will affect
him for life unless you and he attend
therapy. What's even
worse, you are training him to put up with
abuse and to think his father is more
abusive than you. He's got to know how you caused
(intended) such disrespect,
specifically, the exact interactions, else
he'll automatically, unconsciously, attract
an abusive partner. You've got to teach him
(to model for him) how to handle the very
first abusive
communication with a date.
When I think of
advice that I could give you, advice that I
know you can be trusted to follow, two
things come to mind:
You can be trusted to continue
badmouthing and blaming your husband and
to communicate pathetically, verbally
and non-verbally, in a way that triggers
his unresolved childhood anger. Simply
by being in the same room you trigger
his contempt and disrespect. How can he
possibly respect you when you
continually submit yourself and his son
to his aberrant behavior? (yes
he knows and
at some level feels guilty).
He'll have to keep abusing you until you
have the courage and intelligence to
leave; more accurately, you'll keep
setting it up for him to abuse you until you put
you/your son in the hospital and him in
prison (yes, that's a challenging
sentence to be with).
Another
piece of advice you can be trusted to
take is to live with your decision to do
nothing (actually it's not
nothing, it's more of the same)
which will automatically unconsciously create a
circumstance to force a
change; job loss, sickness, accident,
fire, hospital, jail, or even death, so
that you no longer have a choice.
It's possible that what you've been up
to is setting it up to have him sent to
jail. We'll know in a few years. It
partly depends upon how much you want to
hurt your parents. Remaining in the
house with him, as sick as you are, is
an excellent way of ensuring that your
parents remain failures, especially as
grandparents.
BTW: I don't recommend
that you allow either sets of parents to
babysit your child; they are the ones
who unconsciously trained him and you to
be abusive.
Now let's talk about your cause in the
matter. He is mirroring your relationship
with one or both or your parents. You have
lost your ability to opt for an abuse-free
day. You can no longer see your cause of the
abuse with your parents. There was a time
when you could see that if you didn't want
abuse in your life you should have either
reported your parents or left. Millions
of teens run away each year. It's not easy
but they make a choice to not submit
themselves to the perceived or actual abuse
another day. The
choice for you is no easier now. You have
become so used to being put-down that you
actually need your daily fix of
condescensions; you have been so
unconscious that you probably could not hear
the very first put-down on your first date
with Monte. That's when you had a
choice, to insist that he acknowledge the
abuse and clean it up or to not see him
until he completed x hours of counseling.
You made something more important than being
treated respectfully after
which he unconsciously lost his respect for
you.
What you can do to begin the healing process
for yourself (you can't heal him) is
to do The
[free] Clearing Process —it
works.
A great letter that will allow
many in your situation to see themselves.
Thank you, Gabby
P.S. If after
reading this you can get all of it, without
arguing or defending your position, then you
do have choice, now, this moment.
P.P.S. To slap anyone is abusive regardless
of their age or whether or not it leaves a
mark (see definition
of abuse). To hang around
socially with a person addicted to abuse
and, using your leadership communication
skills, set it up for them to slap you, is
abusive of you; it's referred to as entrapment.
What you call love cannot heal anyone.
P.P.P.S. Could this be karma about
conning him into conning you into deceiving
both sets of parents so as to have sex? Perhaps
you believe that are no consequences
for deceptions?
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Last edited 12/5/21
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