It’s been too long since I’ve written. I’m sorry about that, for the people who have followed the blog but more for myself. If I would stick to blogging, it would be a good place to get more clarity. Clarity may lead to peace of mind. Who knows?
I’ve realized something that kind of pisses me off. Both of my husbands, although very different men, have some similarities that distress me, make me feel depressed really. They both have addictions; the first to marijuana and pornography and the second to alcohol, methamphetamine, pornography and sex. I’m not judging them for these addictions. I’ve tried, and liked, all but meth. Addiction is merely one of their similarities.
They are both emotional men, the first more so when not high. The second is extremely emotional when high. Each is abusive when highly emotional. Both are verbally abusive.
My first husband was, is, physical but as far as I know has only been physical with objects and a dog, not people. He said to me once that it was better to hit things than people. Long before I met him, he was raging and threw his dog, breaking the dog’s leg. He swore he’d never again hurt anyone like that. For the same reason, he chose not to drink alcohol. He told me that when he was younger and drank alcohol, he was a very mean person. Items I know have seen his wrath are a plastic glass which shattered when he hit it, a screen door whose metal frame was bent by his punch and an old, wooden door whose panel he punched a hole through.
My second husband became abusive when using meth. He would get paranoid and accuse me of conversations behind his back in which I plotted against him. He would accuse me of infidelities, even with my daughter’s boyfriend and my female boxer. He would withhold attention and affection from me. He would secretly record me and listen to the recordings over and over again while high, imagining the contents to be me raping him while he slept or having sex with other people in our bed while he slept or just having sex with other people.
Neither of them ever actually laid a hand on me. This is not excusing the other abuses. It’s just a fact. I believe both came close though. If you’ve been reading this blog from the start, you know the second husband threw his phone at my head and later threatened to slit my throat. He had also told me more than once he’d know where to hide my body where it would never be found. The first husband would storm away and break things.
Their emotional dysregulation led to severe depressions in both of them. I married my first husband in 1996 after a 10 month courtship. In the first year I learned that when he felt that he’d hurt someone or messed up, rather than apologizing and moving on, he’d punish himself by perseverating on the issue and withholding things he enjoyed from himself. He would also avoid us, his family. I never was able to discern if it was because he hated himself and we didn’t deserve to put up with him or if he hated us because we loved him and he didn’t deserve that love. I termed this cycle he went through as his downward spiral. Since becoming a therapist myself, I’ve read that term used in exactly the way I used it. He never indicated he thought about or wanted suicide. I just knew it was on the plate for him. When we decided on custody during our divorce, I didn’t pursue full custody because I truly thought he would kill himself if his son was kept from him, regardless the reason. That decision may have saved him but it’s had some hard consequences for our son.
Although I didn’t know this until much later, my second husband had periods of suicidality long before he met me. During our marriage, he threatened to killed himself by hanging, pistol, driving into something and shot gun. He fashioned two nooses. One hung in our garage, tucked up in the steel rafters so I might see it but probably wouldn’t and he blamed me for not finding it on my own. He told me he “played” with the one in the garage. He described this as standing with his head in the nose and relaxing his legs until he felt lightheaded. The second noose he had hidden under the ceiling tiles in the dropped ceiling in our basement. He sent me a picture of this noose near his face as a threat when I went to work one morning and wouldn’t take his calls. He brought his shotgun to our bedroom. I thought at the time that he was just trying to scare me. He acheived the mission; I was scared. Having worked on a psychiatric acute unit, I learned long ago that you cannot show fear to people when they may be in the midst of a psychotic break so he never saw my fear. He eventually took the shotgun into the attached bathroom. I heard him pull back the pump action on shotgun, preparing to shoot. As I sat on the bed, these thoughts went quickly, almost instantaneously, through my mind. I thought about jumping up and throwing open the bathroom door to stop him. I dismissed that because I was worried he might as accidentally shoot me. I thought about yelling out to him. I dismissed that because I thought I might startle him and he might accidentally shoot himself. I thought it might be a relief if he did suicide because then this torture would be over. Instead of moving in any way, I sat stuck to the spot feeling paralyzed with tears steaming down my face. Eventually, he released the mechanism and stormed out of the bathroom to the basement. He told me years later that he didn’t have a slug in the chamber that night. I don’t know if that was true or not. At the time he told me it was unloaded, I thought he was gaslighting me, trying to tell me I was making more out of the event than it deserved. He did that a lot.
Both men tried to control me with their words. Both tried to order me to do something or believe something that I didn’t thinking was right, correct or rational. Both tried to insinuate that I was their subordinate and should do as I was told. At other times, both talked about how I was better than them in various ways.
Their childhood experiences may have been very different but there are some similarities there as well. Both of them were the victims of childhood sexual assault by older male adolescents. Both have had their siblings sexually assaulted by an older sibling. Both went through the divorce of their parents. Both had mothers who were extremely strong and outspoken but in a secretive way. They led the family through manipulative control. Both had fathers who drank a lot. Each one had one or both parents verbally abuse them. Each of them saw their fathers as their heroes and wanted to emulate them.
The reason the realization that these two men share so many traits is distressing to me is less about what it says about them and more about what it says about me. Apparently I have a “type” when it comes to men and it’s not a healthy one. The two men I’ve chosen to love and marry are both fixer uppers. They were wounded as children and have been unsuccessful at progressing emotionally much past those wounds. That’s led to depression, anger and addiction. I have to ask myself why I’d take men like that to my bosom. For that I have no answer. This is why I don’t trust myself to date or marry again. This is why I am currently thinking I will have to stay single. I don’t know how to break this pattern.
My Double Life 