Letter to my abusive husband

Dear Husband,

I wonder if you will ever understand why I left.  It seems to me that you were left bewildered on that final day, even though I'd been talking for months about divorce and my inability to take any more.  Why all of a sudden did I snap, did I refuse to take more?  All along you thought every mention of separation was an idle threat, that I'd never carry it out.  You thought you had me for life.  

I want you to know.  I had to leave you to save myself.  If it were for not my emotional survival, if I were not hanging on by my bloody fingernails and slipping, if I could have sustained it, I would never have left.  I did not enter into marriage wanting it to end.  I wanted a marriage, a partnership, a husband who loved me and who would receive my love.  I wanted to love and serve you unconditonally.  I made treasure hunts for you and threw lavish birthday parties and brought you tubs of warm water to soak your feet.  I hate kitchen work but I would slave over gourmet meals and ask you to rate each dish, and I never repeated a dish that was less than four stars.  When you told me straight out that you would never wash dishes despite your prenuptial promises, I wept over the dishes as I washed them myself.  I bit my tongue in public and let you run conversations, I deferred to you and supported you even when I thought you were wrong.  When you got yourself into a conversational bind by making arguments you could not defend, I would jump to your defense and get you out of the fix by explaining what you meant, to make you look good.  Whenever I was reading a good book and you took it away to read it yourself, I let you.  I gave you a candlelight massage and when, a few days later, you refused to rub my painful feet to help me sleep, I cried myself to sleep but then later forced myself to give you another massage, to continue to love you unconditionally.  When you were sad I counseled and consoled; when you were angry I helped you talk through your anger even as you were lashing out at me.  When you were sick I served you hand and foot.  When you were in sin I prayed for you and read myriad books to try to figure out how best to help you out of it.  I braved your anger to challenge you when you were displeasing to God or destroying your own family with your indifference.  You punished me horribly for it every time, but for your sake I continued to bring it up with you, to help you repair those relationships before you lost them forever.  I left when I realized that there was nothing I could do to help you, that you would kill me before you would change, and that it was time for me to save myself.

You broke my heart into a million pieces.  I did not enter this marriage to fight for my way.  I never wanted to run the show.  I wanted to love you, to be a crown of glory on your head, to be wellness in your soul and in your bones.  I would have given you everything, and taken just enough to live on.  But you would not leave me half, or even a sliver.  You would take it all, by force, and you would fight me to the death to teach me never to ask for more than the crumbs you would throw me.  At my every request, no matter how gently I phrased them, you demonized me, until I would deny myself as much as possible unless I could not bear it.  I could not understand why you were willing to fight me for hours, to reduce your strong, beautiful wife to a miserable huddle of tears and pleas crouching on the ground, rather than concede a small point which would have cost you so little.  I could not understand why you could not accept my apologies but felt you had to punish me to the max and teach me a lesson each time so that I would never, ever cross you in that way again.  I could not understand why you would deny me things that would mean the world to me but cost you so little, and why you would say to me, "I was going to do it for you, but because you're asking me for it, now I won't."  I could not understand why you chose me for being smart and beautiful and strong, only to tell me I was ugly and repellant, that nobody liked me, and try to destroy every good thing in me.  I could not understand why when I was sick, or sad, or in despair, it would rev you up more to attack.  It was like a lion spotting a wounded gazelle on the plains -- my weakness inspiring your aggression.  And even towards the end, when I had the rope around my neck, you never stopped in sorrow and said, "Am I hurting you so much that you would rather be dead? I must stop."  If my death did not mean a negative change in your life -- the loss of your servant and reputation -- I am convinced you would have stood by and let it happen.  

Every compromise, every time you finally gave in to me, you only did it because you had to, because otherwise I would leave and your comfortable life of respect would crumble without me to sustain it.  I saw that.  From my right to have my own opinion in the vote, to stopping the fertility treatments that were destroying my health, to letting me watch TV, to opening the door of my freedom that took you five minutes to fix, to allowing me to use my computer on the bed, you wouldn't give me an inch until you saw that it would cost you dearly to not give in.  I saw so clearly that you never did it for me.  You never cared for the hours and nights and weeks I wept.  You only did it for yourself, you viewed it as losing in battle to a mortal enemy, and you punished me secretly for every battle you lost.  You would have sabotaged my career, my health, my heart, and for what?  For your whims.  Your happiness and well-being were my own goals.  They were never at risk.  I wanted you to be happy;  you didn't have to fight me for that.  But it was for absolute total dictatorial control that you destroyed me.  You destroyed me for the $15 a month it would have cost you to buy me milk and bottled water during my too-short pregnancy, for the 5 minutes it took you to open that door, for the two hours it took you to read the book you promised to read, for the right to drink soda in unlimited amounts and destroy your own health.  For the right to not call your family, for the right to avoid going to the doctor, for the plastic box that you didn't really want but did not want me to have.  I was mostly fighting for your health and happiness.  What were you fighting for?  Such petty little things.  The night I told you, "Can you be extra nice to me today? I'm feeling extra vulnerable right now," somehow you saw that as a battle cry, to assault me with one of the most vicious verbal attacks of our marriage, and to take the secrets of my heart and use them to destroy me.  I still don't know what I did that night to deserve it, the attack that only ended when I ran away into the night to a friend's house.  My last birthday in Tamaland...I don't know why you organized the extravagant birthday surprise for me during the day if you were going to punish me for all the work you did with seven hours of verbal abuse that night, raging at me with your accusations that I was "not grateful enough," until I was utterly broken and said I would kill myself if you didn't stop.  It was at first the happiest, and then the most shockingly heartbreaking, birthday of my life.  I wish you hadn't done anything for me at all and left me in peace.

I lived every day afraid of you, on edge, under stress.  I knew the look that meant it was coming, that I was in trouble.  I prayed day and night that you would change.  I punished myself emotionally for every time I lost control and screamed and wept, but I realized that I never had a chance, because you were pushing me to the edge on purpose.  You wanted me to lose control, and it was a battle during every fight, you pushing me to despair, and me fighting for self-control.  You were my adversary, never my lover.  I endured your touch and pretended happiness, but in my heart I was relieved when you turned away at night and left me in peace.  Towards the end, I began to think that death was the only way out, the only way I could escape from you.  At first I asked the Lord to take me.  I did not want to die, but I was like a tortured animal in a cage, wild for freedom from the pain that was closing in around me with no visible way out.  But when I saw that you would only give me just enough care to keep me bound to you, barely alive, barely sane, the unthinkable happened.  I thought it just once:  a prayer that God would take you instead.  I wished that you were dead and I were free.  And it terrified me so much that I knew that leaving you would be better than that evil in my heart.  Better to leave, better to divorce and commit the act that the church would never forgive me, than to commit murder in my heart.  

Maybe you are angry with me for divorcing you.  Certainly the church is angry.  But I'm angry with you too, that you left me no choice.  You caused this divorce.  I never wanted a divorce.  I would have done anything to make our marriage work.  I would have done anything to not be in the position I'm in right now.  You made it impossible for me to believe you -- all the lies, your repentance, the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde act. You told me yourself that you lie, you retracted your apologies, you changed your story within months, days, minutes, you manipulated outsiders against me and sabotaged all the healing.  I forgave you a million times until I could not deny how obvious it was that you weren't sorry one bit and that you intended to continue your behavior til death did us part.  I never wanted this.  I wanted to believe you.  You sneered at my forgiveness, you spat on my grace, you said to me without an apology, "You know you have to forgive me because of Jesus."  Couldn't you have even lied more convincingly?  I would have stayed with you forever if you could have kept deceiving me that you were really sorry, that you really cared about me.  But you became such a bad liar, or maybe once the scales fell from my eyes there was no turning back to the ignorant, suffering hopefulness that had kept me going so long.  I could see you calculating, how far can I push her, how little can I give and still keep her here.  But you miscalculated, you pushed too far, gave too little, and I saw how petty and selfish your heart was, that you would never love me or want my good.

There was a scene from Shrek that stopped me dead when I saw it because I saw you in it.  The prince announces from the tower that he was going to send out knights to rescue the princess from the deadly dragon on his behalf.  He declares magnanimously, "Some of you will lose your lives in the process, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make."  That's you.  You made that sacrifice of my life and well-being every day for your own pleasure.  I saw that I was not even a person to you; I was property and you were entitled to do with it as you liked.  I'm sorry you did not get your money's worth, that the property could not be perfectly controlled and it kept making demands of you.  That big screen TV you wanted, that you were going to force me to buy against my will, would have been a better investment for you.  I hope you have one now.

You could have been the happiest, luckiest man in the world.  I was ready to make it so.  I don't know why you didn't think we could share it.  Why you had to take it all for yourself.  Did you think that you would enjoy sex less if I did not suffer through it?  Did you think that washing a few dishes was not worth the gourmet meals I would gladly have cooked for you for the rest of your life?  Did you enjoy your video games more because I was banging my head against the wall in despair?  Did you have to have it all, did you have to leave me nothing, did you have to rob me in order to feel rich?  Did you have to see me cry in order to be happy yourself?  

A letter to the lady who confronted me in public

Another email I sent out recently.

Dear ----,

I realize that in order to forgive you, I need to tell you what you did to me.

When I saw you at the [public place] last week, it was very very difficult for me that you brought up my personal circumstance in such a public place and forced me to talk about something that I was not prepared to talk about at that time.  In my email in which I revealed the news, I asked people not to talk to me until they had read the book I had recommended.  You did not do that.  You came up to me and forced me to talk about things in public, to my great shame, as people around us could hear us.  You put me in a very difficult and painful position.  

It seems to me that you know very little about abuse.  You did not ask me about my side of the story before judging me and telling me what to do -- to go back to D, an abusive husband. You don't know what he did to me.  You don't know what his heart is like now and whether he's actually repentant, since he has a history of deceiving.  I felt judged and accused by you but I did not feel that you acknowledged the suffering I have gone through and the deep wrong that has been done to me.  You showed that you felt it was wrong for me to leave D -- yet you never said a word about the wrong D has done against me and how he has destroyed the marriage through abuse and force.  Many people have done what you did -- hold me responsible for the dissolution of my marriage without holding D responsible for what he has done to cause it.  If the church had stood up for me during my marriage, during the many times I appealed to it -- to leaders and Christian counselors -- to ask D to change, if they had recognized the injustice and held him accountable, maybe I would not be in this situation today.  But even now, when the truth is in the open, many people in the church refuse to call D's sin sin.  They only see what they think is my sin.  Like you, they come down hard on me and but dispense grace freely to D in his unchanged state.  Without them stating the words that name D's sin, it is difficult for me as a victim to listen to the church.

I appeal to your sense of justice.  You want me to make D change.  In an abusive situation, do you go to the victim and force the victim to try to make the abuser change? Imagine if it were a child being sexually abused by an adult.  Would you send that child back to the adult before the adult makes any changes, and tell the child that he/she must make it right?    Even if the adult said he's changed, the risk is too great to endanger that child. But somehow it's okay for a wife to be abused.  People have no qualms or hesitation in sending me back to abuse.  And that is what happened for six years.  Every time I left him, people pushed me back to him.  And I continued getting abused.  And nobody did anything to help me.  I was told to submit more and to not leave him.

If I could make D change, I would have done so by now.  We have been to counselor after counselor and program after program, me dragging him and begging him and him balking at every step and sabotaging every attempt to improve our marriage. I'm sure there are good programs out there but they will do no good if D is determined not to change.  The power to change D lies only with the Lord and with D himself, not with me or any program.  If you as part of the body of Christ feel responsible for my marriage, why not take it to D instead of me?  Have you contacted D and pushed him the way you did me?  If not, why put a double load of responsibility and grief on me when I have already suffered so much?  Why are you making me relive abuse by pushing me to do something I do not feel safe to do?  Why don't you get Dl to go and do that program and then let me know if he's changed, instead of putting responsibility in my hands, when I have never been able to make him do anything?  

I feel very upset with you for what you did to me in your ignorance and zeal.  You may think that you are doing what is right, but for me there was nothing Christlike about how you approached me.  I felt completely ripped apart at the end of it.  I cried all the way home and spent about an hour being consoled by my housemate at home.  You are one of the many people in my life that has judged me without even asking for my story, causing me to lose faith in the church's power to represent Jesus in both his loving and just nature, to stand up for the powerless and weak, the oppressed woman and child and stranger.   You were not there the nights I ran away from D and shivered in my car and spent the night in seedy motels just to feel safe.  You were not there when I fled to the airport and sat there for hours torn between leaving my marriage and everything that was dear to me and escaping to save myself, terrifed that D would follow and find me and make me come home.  You were not there the countless nights I wept at his cruelty, when I was unable to escape while we were in [ministry place].  Jesus was there and saw.  He rescued me.  

Please do not contact me again.  You did not respect my request to read the book on abuse before talking with me about my situation.  Now I am asking you to respect my request to not contact me any more. There are a few people in my life who still are able to show Christ's love to me, so please entrust me to them.  I ask you to prayerfully consider what I am saying to you, that you spoke too quickly and listened too little, and that you violated the boundary I had asked people to respect.  If you do care about me, you'll pray for me and leave me in peace.  Please understand that I am going through great pain, and I need time and space for healing.   There is no joy in the dissolution of my marriage -- this is never what I wanted.  I have lost almost everything I valued in my life -- my marriage, my reputation, my ministry, my dignity.  I would never have left D if there had been any other way to stay alive and sane.  I begged him on my knees, numerous times, to stop the abuse and he would not.  D has said himself that there was no other way for me, that he knew that his heart was set on never changing.  

Now that I've said my piece, I commit before Jesus to forgiving you for what you have done to me, regardless of whether or not you accept what I'm saying.  You are welcome to be angry with me, you are welcome to feel whatever you like, but please do not contact me. Thank you.

Crooked Talk

Towards the end of my relationship I began to realize exactly how manipulative my spouse was and started calling him on it.  He would not let me use the word "manipulative" though, so we settled on a term "crooked talk."  I said that if he used any crooked talk in talking with me I would call him on it and not let him use those tactics.  In one fight I remember him protesting that I was objecting to literally everything that he was saying.  He was saying that to argue that I was being unfair, but that was when it started to dawn on me that it was true.  Every single sentence he was saying was manipulative and not moving towards a healthy and fair resolution to our conflict.

My counselor would not believe me that my spouse was manipulative, so I made a list of all the tactics I'd noticed at the time.  It's not a complete list, but it's a pretty heavy start.  I include it here so people can see how damaging dialogue can be if both parties aren't really sincere in trying to move towards a mutually satisfying conclusion, but one party is just trying to win at any cost, even the destruction of the partner.

Crooked talk

• Saying he’s really angry about one thing when he’s angry about something else
• Changing what he’s really angry about, switching gears suddenly with no explanation, when I point out how I’m innocent of xyz (i.e. I didn’t do it, or he was the one who actually brought it up, etc. etc.)
• Saying untrue accusations about me (and later admitting they are false and were said just to hurt me)
• Attacking my motivations, saying I want to destroy / emasculate / control him / ruin his life, take away his happiness / identity, etc.  Repeating these things over many days
• Being cold and hostile while I’m weeping
• Saying “I’m just made this way” or “I can’t help it” when I ask for sympathy or compassion
• Avoiding conceding an obvious point by saying “I’m don’t know” or “Maybe” or “I’m confused”
• Not admitting he’s angry (this has gotten better) but instead saying that he’s some other mild emotion – “confused” or “frustrated”
• Getting really, really upset (fake upset?) about something that normally wouldn’t upset him and fixating on that to avoid the real topic (“I’m really angry that you didn’t appreciate me!”)
• Arguing that his rights outweigh my rights, his pain outweighs my pain, and my sins outweigh his sins.  Refusing even to make them equal.  Sometimes ridiculous (him hounding me for 3 days straight telling me I ruined his life, I’m destroying his dreams, etc., is not as hurtful as me saying one simple statement saying to him, “You’re actually the reason we’re staying home from [ministry place].”)
• Jekyll and Hyde – changing completely without explanation
•             He has told me in Jekyll mode that I should discount everything Hyde says
•             But in Hyde mode, he gets very angry that “you don’t believe me”
• When I can prove my point, he does not accept it but instead says angrily, “Fine, you’re right.  You’re always right.”  Then the argument breaks down even further.
• Turning around his own wrongs to be my fault (even if I didn’t do anything yet )
•             “I did this because I was afraid that you would get angry and I would get in trouble”
•             “I broke my promise because you forced me to make the promise in the first place”
•             “I was going to do [what you wanted], but now that you’re asking me to, I don’t want to because you’re controlling me.”
• Making deals and then backing out of his side of the deal, but still holding me to my side
• Wanting exceptions to all the rules for himself, but holding me to the letter of the law
• Being angry for not being praised, thanked, appreciated, empathized with
• Suddenly changing the subject when confronted on his own wrongs
• Untrue causality statements
• Punishing me verbally for the things I did wrong, even if I’ve apologized, often to “teach me” never to do it again
• Claiming that I NEVER apologize or give in, even though I do
• Claiming that I always get my way / control him, even though he mostly gets his way
• Lying that he’s sorry at the very moment that he is afraid to lose me, then retracting
• Suddenly changing his mind when he sees negative consequences
• Saying the only solution should have been that I never brought it up (basically angry that I brought it up and blaming the entire fight on me because I brought up the topic)
• Blaming me / being angry for the time lost in fighting, how long it's taking, or how late it is at night, and fighting about that
• Apologizing for something and telling me he’s changed and he agrees with me, but then later taking it back and reasserting his former statements
• Saying he needs a “long time and many chances to change” but demanding instant perfection from me
• Getting angry at me for my boundaries, and trying to take away my right to leave / be angry
• Bringing up random unrelated bad things I've done in the past to justify his current wrong
• Fixating and harping on one statement or one or two words out of context and using that as a strategy to evade the main point
• Saying things just to push my buttons and not trying to help me not lose my temper
• Egging me on to lose my temper, saying, “You hate me.  Say that you hate me!  You want a divorce. Say it!  Say it!”
• After pushing me to lose my temper and I lose it, suddenly rearranging the whole conversation to focus on the problem of my temper, because “your temper trumps all my sins”
• Trying to blame the fight on an innocuous thing I did early in the conversation and telling me “never to do that again” e.g. never bring up talking about his diet; never bring up anything remotely serious at night, before leaving to go somewhere, in the car, right when he comes home, etc. etc.
• Using verbal strategies not intended to bring the conversation to a solution, but just to score points and “win.”  Trying to push his agenda and not trying to get to the bottom of things.
• Claiming childhood trauma is the cause of everything, and then going into weepy counseling mode and wanting counseling from me – even if I was the one who was hurt in the first place. No matter why we start the conversation we end up with me consoling and counseling him for his pain and trauma.  Nothing is his fault – it’s how he was raised.
• Rejecting any negative emotion from me, demanding that I ONLY say encouraging positive things and never say anything negative – however, not following this policy himself
• Accusing me of “screaming and yelling, blowing up” when I’m talking in a normal voice, upset but still calm
• Accusing me of traumatizing him but not seeing how he hurts me
• Accusing me of things that he is also guilty of, without shame or conflict over his hypocrisy – “You ALWAYS hyperbolize!”
• Demanding that I always speak in a sweet tone of voice, but not watching his own tone of voice.  Refusing to accept things I say in a nonsweet tone.
• Demanding that I never move my hands when I talk. Refusing to accept things I say if I have moved my hands.
• Demanding grace even though he’s not apologizing -- “You are all law and no grace!”
• Immediately cheerful and happy after fights are over and wanting to have sex even though I don’t want to
• Forcing me to be physically affectionate when I don’t want to
• Forcing me to sit on his lap when I don’t want to
• Getting angry with me if I don’t want physical affection, and punishing me eventually
• Not showing guilty feelings about his own behavior except when there are negative consequences for him
• Not realizing he’s guilty about anything without my spelling it out for him, and proving it to him over many laborious hours
• Not accepting my no but bringing up requests over and over again
• Saying yes to my requests but not really listening or doing them.  Sometimes he says “okay” and then immediately does the opposite.  Then gets very, very angry when I react unhappily.   e.g. While he’s drinking from my water bottle, I say: “D, don’t throw away that water bottle when you’re done.  I want to keep it.”  D:  “Ok.”  (Throws bottle away literally five seconds after he’s said ok)
• Will never allow me to say, “I can’t take this any more.”
• Agreeing on something together and then deliberately pursuing something opposite (we agree on a townhouse, he starts looking at big houses, we agree on a price range, he starts looking outside that price range, we agree on a certain house and he rents a totally different house) – then protesting innocence (“Can’t I even look?”  “I wasn’t serious, just curious”) even though he’s done this often in the past and I know that at some point he’s going to start pushing for it for real
• Getting angry when I get upset at him for not listening, and then saying that he is actually physically incapable of remembering what I ask, and that he needs lots of repetition.  Not acknowledging that he’s not listening. 
• Ignoring my repeated requests until I blow up and then getting mad at me for blowing up
• Not recognizing what he’s really angry at and taking it out on me. 
• e.g. He broke a glass in the bathroom and made a mess.  He was upset and came to talk to me about it.  I asked him if he cleaned it up.  All of a sudden we are in a huge fight because he feels I was not empathetic enough and he is furious at me.  I immediately try to be empathetic but it’s not good enough.  A few hours later I am weeping my eyes out and wondering what I did to deserve this.  I believe he made me pay for his bad feelings at breaking the glass.   And I wasn’t even there when it happened!  He sought me out and then took it out on me. 
• e.g. We often had huge fights after working out at the gym.  Finally he admitted that he feels really angry with me for no reason because he feels aggressive and in a bad mood after he works out.  But during those fights he could always find some fake reason to be mad at me, and I wouldn’t be able to understand why he would blow up over such little things, often things I had been doing for a long time.
• Holding onto anger for a long time (up to a year) and then punishing me for them, to "teach me a lesson to never do that again"

Poem

The dawn after nuclear fallout

Is hushed and beautiful

The silence of sunlight rising from the ash heap

An emptiness that is utterly free

Jesus, I throw myself headlong

Into the waterfall of your grace

The blood like endless waves

Lapping over me like the forgetful sea

The bliss of gore and grime melting away

Into the ocean of your suffering

Your pain erasing mine

And setting me free

The holocaust has taken my all

And in this shadow of death I see you

And only you

You whose shadow is light

I kneel and give you my all, again

7/20/13

Syria, chemical warfare, and marriage

As I read about the whole Syria chemical warfare debacle, it reminds me of my marriage. 

Here's how it sounds to me:

• I promise not to use chemical warfare.
• I didn’t use chemical warfare.  It’s a lie.  The other side used chemical warfare.
• You’re going to take consequences?  What?  No, I didn’t use chemical warfare.  The other side did.
• You’re really going to take consequences?  What?!!  Wait, let me get other big people involved on my side.
• Ok, the big guy is on my side and because of him I promise to hand over my weapons and play nice if you don’t take consequences.  But you won’t really know if I handed over all the weapons or what my intentions are in the future.  But trust me!

[In my marriage, what would come next was my forgiveness, reconciliation, and him saying:  I promise not to use chemical warfare.]

And it all starts again:

• What?  I didn’t use chemical warfare.  The other side did.

…

The similarities between the two situations highlights for me what’s wrong in both relationships:

1) These are not relationships of trust.  Dishonesty about motives, intentions, and future actions make it more of a power play rather than a real relationship. 

2) Both parties are trying to get what they want.  One party is trying to get the other to comply with a previous agreement, and the other party is trying to avoid consequences without having to fully comply with that agreement by appearing to comply.

3) Both parties are eyeing each other, sizing each other up, trying to anticipate each other’s next move.  It’s a nerve-wracking, hair-pulling situation as you try to gauge the sincerity of the other party and how much you can get them to do what you want.

4) The presence of the witnesses (Russia and the U.N. for Syria and the U.S.; counselors and the church for me) doesn’t really help because of #1 – the issue of honesty.  The influence of these witnesses – who knows if they will help or harm, as they try to push actions one way or the other? 

5) It's never about whether the one party intends goodwill, as they clearly don't.  It's more about what you can force them to do.  True trust can never come from this starting point.

I’m not trying to extrapolate and say that whether or not the U.S. should attack Syria is the same as whether or not I should file for divorce against my husband.  But for the first time I appreciate how delicate as well as dirty politics are, because I’m living it.  As an idealistic child I would have said tearfully, “Why can’t we all just be nice to each other?”  But in a world where oppression of others brings clear benefit, why would people be nice to each other when they could be not nice and get their way?  During the breakdown of my marriage I have understood a tiny tiny bit of what it feels like to be an oppressed people under a dictator who will take all your money, your freedom, your dignity, your safety and your lives, without the slightest bit of remorse, and then go onto a public mike and declare how much good he has done for his people.  The hurt and disbelief, the fury and indignation, the unwillingness to trust or compromise any more, the desire to just get that dictator out of there…I understand a little bit of how that feels.  I’m not saying that I support a violent overthrow or the murder of a dictator; I have been horrified at the atrocities that ensue with such a coup.  But I understand the helpless fury, the anger at all the manipulation and the lies, and the inability to trust after trust has been broken so blatantly and remorselessly.  I understand the shaking fists behind the Arab Spring, the "never again, never again."  

Oh, Jesus, please intercede...

What the ending of 50 First Dates tells me

On a whim, I just watched the movie 50 First Dates again.  Although the movie itself contains some unnecessary parts that I don't appreciate, I’ve always loved the ending – one of my top 10 favorite Hollywood scenes of all time.  I love watching Lucy wake up to find herself ensconced in silk sheets on a boat in the middle of an arctic paradise, among majestic glaciers and glistening seas, with an adoring husband, a darling little girl, and her dad contentedly fishing, as the song, “Somewhere over the rainbow,” highlights the fulfillment of all her unspoken dreams.  She gasps, "Oh my goodness," as the wonder of it laps over her soul.

Life can be such a horror, a wreck.  But there’s a dream that someone out there loves you so much that he is going to surprise you, create with his own bare hands a fairy tale dream come true for you, and give you more than you could have ever hoped for.  The character Henry took Lucy’s dead-end life, focused only on surviving and maintaining status quo, and turned it into a daily awe at a happiness that had suddenly descended upon her – a happiness she had no ability to craft for herself.  And there was a gentleness, an attentiveness, in him winning her daily, that highlights the respect for her daily consent.  Love cannot overpower and force, does not trap and then compel by obligation, with the excuse that "in the end this will make you happy."  It woos, every day, and holds back when the time is not right.

    

In the nuclear wreckage of my life, this is my hope.  That my life can be changed from a disappointing dead end to something beautiful and amazing, otherworldly in goodness and joy.  In this life, at some point some people have to concede that the earthly dream of human love and family will probably never be theirs.  Many people never find a human “true love,” never marry, or marry into a sea of hurts and wrecked hopes; never have children, or have children who are ripped away from them far too young or who grow up to curse them and hate them.  And yet their life doesn't have to be a failure.  We here on earth set our sights far too low.  I don’t know if I have any future hopes of love or family on earth.  Some people I talk to insist that it must be still to come -- whether they believe that's with my abusive husband, magically reformed in their minds, or with someone else.  Like the women who could never accept my infertility, would never allow me to express my closure on that path, but insisted that there must still be a baby coming for me.  But for me, it's ok if it doesn't include that earthly happiness.  It would be nice, I guess, but right now I rest my hopes on divine love, that Jesus is the author of my wonderful future, that he can change my outlook, reverse nuclear destruction, and resurrect the dead.  There is an outcome far more surprising, enchanting, life-giving than the one I dreamed of, in His hands, still to come.  I can't wait to see what it will be.

Letter to my church leadership

Here's a letter I recently wrote to a member on my church leadership.  He is a great guy whom I respect tremendously.  He didn’t have the whole story of my marriage so I wanted to enlighten him.  I thought maybe it was a good summary of my situation for people who are curious about my side of the story.   

Dear --,

I wanted to respond to some of what you said in the phone call -- there wasn't time at that moment.  I'm certainly open to feedback and advice, but I wanted to give you a little more information to give some clarity. 

It seemed clear to me when you were exhorting me to stay in the marriage and giving your own difficult and now successful marriage as an example, that you did not understand that this is not just a difficult marriage in which I have simply given up because I do not understand the sanctity of marriage in the eyes of God.  This is not the case.

Please understand that abuse and a normal difficult marriage are worlds apart.  In a normal marriage, there are broken expectations, hurt feelings, and angry words said on both sides, and both sides need to forgive, repent and change their behavior to make it work.  In an abusive situation, it is one-way.  I'm not saying that I did nothing wrong in the marriage, but abuse means that the destructive pattern is enforced from one side, to the point that there is nothing that the abused partner can do to make it better (except leave). 

When it benefited him, D deliberately wanted to hurt and destroy me, and no amount of crying and begging on my part ever evoked any compassion in him.  He said when he saw my tears it made him feel more aggressive.  The only way I could get him to stop verbally abusing me (for many hours, often through the night) was to hurt myself physically.  (In [ministry place] I physically could not leave him because I had no money or social power to call myself a taxi and get away.)  However, he would grow immune to the amount I hurt myself, and so it had to heighten over the years.  By the end of our time in [ministry place] I was putting a rope around my neck.  I was not suicidal; I did not want to die.  But after seven hours of verbal abuse that would not stop, I simply did not know any other way to get him to stop.  Unfortunately within a short time suicide threats were not enough either, and he would just yank me violently away from the rope and then continue to verbally abuse me.  I was desperate, beaten down, and when I appealed to counselors and admin, D was a master manipulator to twist the facts and get it to look like it was my fault -- the suicide attempts did not help my credibility.  They did not believe me.  He almost had me diagnosed as borderline personality disorder by a counselor who never asked me my side of the story -- when I confronted the counselor, he quickly retracted that diagnosis.  I probably would have gone into a mental hospital at some point if God did not give me the clarity to begin realizing over the last year that there was something seriously wrong with D, and the resources to discover what emotional abuse was.  (I read a book called Why Does He Do That?  Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men and was shocked at how the depiction of abuse fit my marriage like a glove.) 

The common Christian marriage advice -- to love and forgive unconditionally, for women to submit to their husbands, to give 100% and not look for 50% back from the partner -- were all disastrous for me as D used my faith and goodwill against me to subjugate me.  I was not allowed to spend money or do anything against his will, and he would "punish" me for any infractions of his will even up to a year after I had done them.  Yet he was able to maintain a good front to outsiders -- a front that I helped him keep up since Christian counselors, leaders, marriage resources, etc. had exhorted me not to shame my husband by complaining about him to others.  The book Love and Respect gave him the spiritual vocabulary to subjugate me even further.  I kept waiting for the outcome predicted in the book -- if I respected and submitted to him then one day he would turn and love me back -- but it never happened.  The more I submitted, the more domineering and angrier he became, saying that everything I did that he didn't like -- even what I was wearing or if I cut my hair -- was disrespectful.  But he could easily say the words, "I love you" and so in his eyes he was fulfilling the book.   Normal marriage advice works for normal bad marriages.  It doesn't work for abuse.

Abusers have something wrong in their worldview, making them feel entitled to dominate over their partner completely, and studies show that abusers rarely change, although they do a master job of pretending repentance.  The worst of it is the lies and broken promises -- broken deliberately, without remorse.  I have talked about divorce many times and actually left D a few times during our marriage, and each time he would beg and "repent" and promise to change -- promises which produced a short period of good behavior but then turned into "it was actually your fault" and a deliberate breaking of the promises after a short time.  He would admit afterwards that he lies in his repentance, and he isn't really repentant.  (The way he worded it is that I "forced him to say things he didn't mean" because I wouldn't come back unless he said he was sorry.)  There is no reason for me to believe that he is any different now.

If a child were abused by an adult, would you send that child back to the adult asking her to trust again?  I feel like people hear "emotional abuse" and they don't think it's very serious.  They think it just means that he was sometimes mean to me and didn't know how to control his words.  Abusive men do not need anger management therapy -- they know how to control their anger, since they rarely show that side to outsiders.  They reserve their anger for their spouse and children.  The problem is their belief that the partner is property and they can treat her any way they like.  It's a much more insidious and difficult-to-change, deeply ingrained atttitude. 

I am asking you:  Please do not be so quick to conclude that God wants me to return to him, without listening to the other side.  Please do not try to send me back into a situation of abuse.  I do believe that God has a plan for D, to redeem, restore, and save him.  However, I don't know if our marriage is the context for that to happen.  Historically every time I've gone back to him it's arrested his growth and need to change, because he becomes gleeful that he got away with it again, and then much more hard-hearted the next time.  Unfortunately, there is no way to tell if an abuser will resume abusing until after the partner has returned because they are great liars and on their best behavior until they feel secure in the relationship again.  There is no easy fix, no pat answer, to a situation like this.  Jesus told us to be innocent as doves and wise as serpents.  I think we Christians are good at the dove part but bad at the serpent part -- we are naive and easily fooled by manipulators because we desperately want to believe that they are repentant and changing.

Please know that I am seeking the Lord with all my heart, scouring the Bible with the desire to see what it truly commands, and not trying to twist it for my own purposes. I have committed to do what is God's will when He shows it to me clearly -- and I believe He will do that in the right time.  However, I get confused by pastors and other people who are telling me that I am not allowed to divorce him and that God never could want this marriage to end, without understanding the nature of abuse.  One of my pastors (from a different church) told me that I was technically not allowed to divorce even if he were beating me (he does recommend a separation though -- but is that a marriage?  A marriage on paper only).  I don't agree with that.  My heart breaks for some of the broken women I have met at the domestic abuse shelter -- most of them with children, financially ruined, and their sense of self broken -- and some of them Christians for whom the church did no good in recognizing and helping them out of abuse.  I myself see God as my Rescuer who gave me the exact resource (the book) I needed to pluck me out of that situation.  I also see God as loving to D that he took me away and broke D's illusion that he was a good man and everything he did was right. 

I respectfully disagree with you that God is necessarily going to be more glorified if I stay with him than if I leave.  I think that God will be glorified in the way that He determines, and we don't know what that is until He tells us.  If I go back to D every time and he continues to abuse me, is that glorifying to God?  I know that in your heart you don't want that, you want the abuse to stop and us to stay together.  But what if the abuse doesn't stop -- and studies show that it's very, very rare for an abuser to change?  What if every time I go back he keeps abusing me?  How long until you would say I'm allowed to divorce him?  Are my six years not long enough?  One pastor said to me, "Don't be so quick to leave him."  That hurt me.  It feels quick to outsiders because they have only just heard of it.  But I have struggled with wanting to leave D from the very first week of our marriage, and I've watched him descend into worse and worse cruelty, and I've seen the lies and broken promises repeating themselves for years.  I endured and stayed with him so long for the glory of God and the sake of the ministry, until I realized that it was not improving but getting worse, and God was not being glorified by the lies and unrighteousness.  I paid a heavy cost to leave D -- it breaks my heart that I may never go back to the people I love in [ministry place] -- and I still feel that I did the right thing. 

The book I mentioned above, Why Does He Do That? is an excellent resource.  If you are interested to read it (I know you are busy though), I would be happy to buy it for you.  I also recommended it to my [leadership] and wrote them a guide to which chapters were the most helpful so that they didn't have to read it all.  I remain open to the counsel of pastors at [church], and desire it.  It would help me if I knew that you all had your eyes open to what is really going on by reading this book.  I'm sorry for such a long email.  I also want to affirm that I respect you and [church]'s leadership immensely, and if this email in any way communicates disrespect or disregard for the servants of God, I apologize and say that it was a mistake in my communication, not a true depiction of my attitude. 

Thank you for reading.  I appreciate you.

In Christ,

S.