A Letter to My Abuser...

I am writing to let you know that I can no longer hold my feelings in about the past. I am in the process of healing, and as I move forward, I need to assert my feelings. I cannot let the things that have happened between us affect me any longer. I do not take accountability for the abuse that I endured during our relationship. However, I do give this responsibility to you.

I now know that it was not my fault and will no longer punish myself for your actions. I believe that you crossed my boundaries and disrespected me. And because I am building a better relationship with myself, I now know that I deserve better and have the right for my voice to be heard.

I will not excuse your behavior as being okay because your actions were inappropriate; however, I’ve decided that I am no longer going to hate or resent you. I do know that I will always be fearful that any further encounter with you could cause me grave physical, emotional and spiritual harm, jeopardizing my life further; however, part of healing from the abuse and moving forward with my life is forgiving myself and placing the responsibility and accountability back to the abuser, the person that caused me harm. If you do not know what you have done (Narcissists will deny everything), I am completing my process of healing by writing my trauma narrative; recounting the hurtfulness and all the abusive and unkindness you purged onto me and in my life. I am telling your secrets.

My narrative is the emotional communications that have limited and restricted MY life for the past three years.

My narrative frees me from the pain and unkindness you brought into my life and gives the accountability and responsibility of the abuse to the abuser. My trauma narrative belongs to you. “It doesn't seem right that a relationship that should have been a legacy of love is a monument of misery.”

I revisited the countless situations from the beginning of our relationship; I learned that I had been "groomed" from the start into an abusive cycle and that my behavior was due to being emotionally badgered and reacting in self-defense. Fully trusting that my fiancé would always look out for my health and welfare and have my best interest at heart at all costs, my willingness to be abilging and accommodating was preyed upon.

No longer deluded by the language I was brainwashed with, there were very serious concerns from the beginning, with the flight of your first wife with your daughter and being denied contact or visitation, an uprising of health concerns I encountered after becoming intimate with you, and your admitting to visual hallucinations. These are only a few examples. Yet, giving you the benefit of the doubt, I made the choice to go into the mobile home park, to meet a high school drop-out sneaking across the street to have sex with his sixty year old neighbor. Unfortunately, my choice to be with an "air conditioning repair man," also brought other negative repercussions of being subjected to abuse. Although you would have me believe differently, that you were living in a "gated community" and were a "service technician," with a GED, the reality is that a pickle can only be a pickle! Trying to make me believe that a pickle could ever be a cucumber would NEVER happen. I don't expect, nor do I believe you have the capacity to look that introspectively and do the intense work needed to have an understanding of self or anyone else, but this is about my healing and returning the accountability and responsibility for all the abuse back to you. In addition, after you inflicted pain and hurt, you ran like a coward, as if you were a victim.

A crucial revelation was that you have never expressed accountability or responsibility on your part in this or with any of your relationships. In lieu of being a responsible adult, someone "doing better, being better" you abused me, through coercion, infidelity, withholding, anger, finances, disrespect, devaluing, shaming, degrading, exposing me to health risks and even being so hurtful as to go as far to threaten me. You did not have the right to cause me harm.

The truth is that there is no excuse for being abusive. Whether it's a learned reaction, or an expression, there is no excuse for treating someone like less than they are. There is no place in a relationship for fear, and there is no room in a relationship for inflicted pain. You did not have the right to abuse me to feel better about yourself or to take any entitlements that were not yours. You did not have the right to project your anger and resentment for my achievements and abuse and devalue me. It was my mistake to believe that you had risen above adversity. Abuse is abuse and you are accountable and responsible.

Forgiving is not condoning; and your hurtful actions have consequences. “Pain does not equal love, love equals love.” So, when you said to me that you didn’t realize how much you loved me I never imagined love to be so painful, so painful that I never would wish the hurt I’ve felt on anyone, not even you. Love is not abuse…abuse is not love… Now all I do is try to forget the man that never existed, the dream I was coerced to believe in. I continue to write my trauma narrative, telling all the secrets and exposing all the painful memories. Only now, no longer deluded from your brainwashing, I am only responsible for my part and you are accountable for the harm you caused.

ABUSE is NOT a secret!

You did not have the right to abuse me.

You can't hide that a bitter tasting pickle
will NEVER taste like a cucumber.

Having Your Needs Denied

One way of looking at emotional abuse is being denied the thing you need when you need it the most.

John Bradshaw says something similar to this.

He said we were most shamed at the times when we were most in need.

My Abuser - Covert Passive Aggressive: A Grown Man With a Child's Ego...

Passive Aggressive Behavior Defined:
Passive Aggressive behavior is a form of covert abuse. When someone hits you or yells at you, you know that you've been abused. It is obvious and easily identified. Covert abuse is subtle and veiled or disguised by actions that appear to be normal, at times loving and caring. The passive aggressive person is a master at covert abuse.

Passive aggressive behavior stems from an inability to express anger in a healthy way. A person's feelings may be so repressed that they don't even realize they are angry or feeling resentment. A passive aggressive can drive people around him/her crazy and seem sincerely dismayed when confronted with their behavior. Due to their own lack of insight into their feelings the passive aggressive often feels that others misunderstand them or, are holding them to unreasonable standards if they are confronted about their behavior.

Common Passive Aggressive Behaviors:
• Ambiguity: I think of the proverb, "Actions speak louder than words" when it comes to the passive aggressive and how ambiguous they can be. They rarely mean what they say or say what they mean. The best judge of how a passive aggressive feels about an issue is how they act. Normally they don't act until after they've caused some kind of stress by their ambiguous way of communicating.

• Forgetfulness: The passive aggressive avoids responsibility by "forgetting." How convenient is that? There is no easier way to punish someone than forgetting that lunch date or your birthday or, better yet, an anniversary.

• Blaming: They are never responsible for their actions. If you aren't to blame then it is something that happened at work, the traffic on the way home or the slow clerk at the convenience store. The passive aggressive has no faults, it is everyone around him/her who has faults and they must be punished for those faults.

• Lack of Anger: He/she may never express anger. There are some who are happy with whatever you want. On the outside anyway! The passive aggressive may have been taught, as a child, that anger is unacceptable. Hence they go through life stuffing their anger, being accommodating and then sticking it to you in an under-handed way.

• Fear of Dependency: From Scott Wetlzer, author of Living With The Passive Aggressive Man. "Unsure of his autonomy and afraid of being alone, he fights his dependency needs, usually by trying to control you. He wants you to think he doesn't depend on you, but he binds himself closer than he cares to admit. Relationships can become battle grounds, where he can only claim victory if he denies his need for your support."

• Fear of Intimacy: The passive aggressive often can't trust. Because of this, they guard themselves against becoming intimately attached to someone. A passive aggressive will have sex with you but they rarely make love to you. If they feel themselves becoming attached, they may punish you by withholding sex.

• Obstructionism: Do you want something from your passive aggressive spouse? If so, get ready to wait for it or maybe even never get it. It is important to him/her that you don’t get your way. He/she will act as if giving you what you want is important to them but, rarely will he/she follow through with giving it. It is very confusing to have someone appear to want to give to you but never follow through. You can begin to feel as if you are asking too much which is exactly what he/she wants to you to feel.

• Victimization: The passive aggressive feels they are treated unfairly. If you get upset because he or she is constantly late, they take offense because; in their mind, it was someone else's fault that they were late. He/she is always the innocent victim of your unreasonable expectations, an over-bearing boss or that slow clerk at the convenience store.

• Procrastination: The passive aggressive person believes that deadlines are for everyone but them. They do things on their own time schedule and be damned anyone who expects differently from them.

The Passive Aggressive and You:
The passive aggressive needs to have a relationship with someone who can be the object of his or her hostility. They need someone whose expectations and demands he/she can resist. A passive aggressive is usually attracted to co-dependents, people with low self-esteem and those who find it easy to make excuses for other's bad behaviors.

The biggest frustration in being with a passive aggressive is that they never follow through on agreements and promises. He/she will dodge responsibility for anything in the relationship while at the same time making it look as if he/she is pulling his/her own weight and is a very loving partner. The sad thing is, you can be made to believe that you are loved and adored by a person who is completely unable to form an emotional connection with anyone.

The passive aggressive ignores problems in the relationship, sees things through their own skewed sense of reality and if forced to deal with the problems will completely withdraw from the relationship and you. They will deny evidence of wrong doing, distort what you know to be real to fit their own agenda, minimize or lie so that their version of what is real seems more logical.

The passive aggressive will say one thing, do another, and then deny ever saying the first thing. They don't communicate their needs and wishes in a clear manner, expecting their spouse to read their mind and meet their needs. After all, if their spouse truly loved them he/she would just naturally know what they needed or wanted. The passive aggressive withholds information about how he/she feels, their ego is fragile and can't take the slightest criticism so why let you know what they are thinking or feeling? G-d forbid they disclose that information and you criticize them.

Confronting the Passive Aggressive:
Beware, if you confront the passive aggressive he/she will most likely sulk, give you the silent treatment or completely walk away leaving you standing there to deal with the problem alone.

Inside the Passive Aggressive:
The passive aggressive has a real desire to connect with you emotionally but their fear of such a connection causes them to be obstructive and engage in self-destructive habits. He/she will be covert in their actions and it will only move him/her further from his/her desired relationship with you.

The passive aggressive never looks internally and examines their role in a relationship problem. They have to externalize it and blame others for having shortcomings. To accept that he/she has flaws would be tantamount to emotional self-destruction. They live in denial of their self-destructive behaviors, the consequences of those behaviors and the choices they make that cause others so much pain.

The passive aggressive objectifies the object of their desire. You are to be used as a means to an end. Your only value is to feed his/her own emotional needs. You are not seen as a person with feelings and needs but as an extension of him/her. They care for you the way they care for a favorite chair. You are there for their comfort and pleasure and are of use as long as you fill their needs.

The passive aggressive wants the attention and attachment that comes with loving someone but fears losing his/her independence and sense of self to his/her spouse. They want love and attention but avoid it out of fear of it destroying them. You have to be kept at arms length and if there is an emotional attachment it is tenuous at best.

The only hope for change in the way they deal with relationship issues is if they are able to acknowledge their shortcomings and contributions to the marital problems. Facing childhood wounds, looking internally instead of externally to find the cause of problems in their life will help them form deeper emotional attachments with a higher sense of emotional safety.