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Control: Hindsight is 20/20

© My friend, J. Gorman

I manage an online e-group for verbal abuse support, and this is one of the posts from there (reprinted with permission). I wanted to share this with everyone as an article because it says so much. I'm sure that anyone who reads this will say "YES! I understand!"

I have edited very little; this is mostly exactly as she wrote it. This post was an answer to a post from someone else, by the way, who commented on the fact that her abuser was being "normal" for once, and that she wanted to "rejoice in the normalcy that accompanies peace" for a while.

Hi All,

I wanted to wait until someone responded to Tracey, so that I could see if I was the only one that was a little concerned.

I just put my house on the market and have been cleaning house. I stumbled on some old journals. They were incomplete, but in all of them, dating back to 6 months after I got married, 12 years ago, I was extremely unhappy. I am amazed that I spoke of disrespect, mistreatment etc... even THEN. There were some extenuating circumstances...I had a chronic illness and had been in a deep depression. I realize now, that it did not matter, my personal maladies. I had a right to be treated with respect.

To make it short. I tried all the way back then to be positive, not complain etc... when I look back, MOST of what I complained about were reasonable adult requests. I started choking down my anger, disappointment and resentment to the point that I was relatively happy. I learned how to smile no matter what and it became a habit. Unfortunately, I think this false life keep me in a low simmering depression and anxiety for a long time. It also stole my self esteem.

But that's not the worst part.

What I realize now is that I was being controlled. In essence, he still did EXACTLY what he wanted to a criminal degree...throwing me a few bones every now and then. I was so needy of attention, cooperation etc, that any effort on his part felt huge....when it was actually not even close to the minimum one would expect in a marital relationship. In essence, he got rewarded for poor behavior and minimal effort. He acted better because he totally got his way.

I had not made any progress. He just got to have his women, his golf, his fancy clothes etc WITHOUT me making a stink about it....which gave him LICENSE to push the envelope further.....and me to shrink more. (Eventually, he had enough rope to hang himself).

The copyright of the article Control: Hindsight is 20/20 in Verbal/Emotional Abuse is owned by My friend, J. Gorman. Permission to republish Control: Hindsight is 20/20 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.