It’s day 27 of Domestic Violence Awareness Month for men and boys, the invisible victims of domestic violence. “Luke” thought he had met the love of his life — a mother of two, a writer and a yoga instructor. On the surface, she seemed to have it altogether. Then, on a once in a lifetime holiday, she went from Sun Salutation to Downward Facing Crazy Bitch.
Namaste Bitches
I met her in 2006 when I came to her yoga class. Yes, you read that correctly: she is a yoga teacher. Someone who is supposed to be an example of peace, serenity, and kindness.
I’ll never forget the day I met her. She seemed so kind, so put together, a breath of fresh air, a departure from the other women I’d dated. It felt so great at the beginning, so perfect that I’d happen across this person.
Little did I know that I had just gotten on the biggest rollercoaster of my life.
Things progressed relatively quickly. We went on trips together, made passionate love like there was nothing else in the world to do, everything was a joyous occasion. We spent so much time together.
Two months in the relationship, she told me she loved me: looked deeply into my eyes after sex and said this.
I had planned on taking a trip around the world by myself. I realized that I wanted her to come. I asked her if she’d accompany me.
That was a huge mistake.
The trip went as such: on a regular basis, she accused me of “not acting like a man” on a regular basis, for any arbitrary reason she could find. We would see other couples happily having meals and she’d get angry we weren’t like them. We fought constantly and afterward she would be angry that I wouldn’t approach her and initiate sex. It got to the point where we’d go to bed angry, she’d refuse my advances, and then be furious in the morning we hadn’t made love (this became a major part of the relationship in the future).
It got so bad I broke up with her. In a foreign country. I was miserable. She seemed miserable. I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working, but it certainly was not good for the either of us. She didn’t want to go along with any of my plans, she constantly was belittling me and chiding me, and I felt that I was seeing her true colors – and it wasn’t pretty.
We agreed to be amicable the rest of the trip. It was agonizing. On a trip I’d waited years to go on, I was counting the days to my flight.
At the airport, she broke up with me, with much finality. I welcomed this. We were getting on different flights to different places so I found myself nursing a beer in an airport bar wondering just what in the world had just taken place, half thankful for dodging a bullet, and half sad because I had liked her so much.
I got off my flight a dozen hours later to countless emails from her. Apparently on the way back to the states she’d had an epiphany – and that epiphany was that we were actually meant to be together, and she admitted that she’d been out of line on the trip.
I returned home soon after that, and things progressed. We got back together. Everything seemed to be going swimmingly.
I really let some behaviors slide that, in retrospect, were absolutely asinine. She had a close relationship with a male friend that was completely inappropriate, and once we broke up and he shared his feelings of love with her. When we got back together (the breakup was a total of two days) she didn’t sever or change this relationship. In fact, she kind of kept it on the back burner as a bargaining chip whenever things got messy with us “I feel like HIS love is unconditional, HE understands me, etc, etc”
I spent the majority of my time trying to patch up our relationship and figure out if it was something that was long-term, or just a really big mistake. I had fallen in love. I told her I loved her regularly. It was never enough. Nothing was ever enough. She would state exactly what she wanted and needed from me in reference to affection, attention, and support. But she wouldn’t do the same with me, she stopped doing all the sweet and thoughtful things she’d done at the beginning of the relationship.
Jealousy became the theme of the entire relationship. Waitresses, friends, mutual acquaintances, women in general – they all were potential objects of my affection. I learned to not let my eye stray EVER when she told me that I had a “wandering eye”, and was always ogling the opposite sex.
Then the writing started. She was a talented author and had a blog with a relatively considerable following. I was overjoyed for her at first that she was so successful in this realm, and then it got strange. Every time we got in a fight or she found something she disliked about me, it somehow made its way into her newest blog post. It seemed that she’d indirectly attack me publicly through this new means of leverage she’d gained. People couldn’t believe what an awful, unsupportive, unloving boyfriend she had. They validated and supported her. I began to realize people who hadn’t met me and followed her writing easily put two and two together (like I did): I was the subject of these writings.
I put my foot down. I asked her never to write about me. She feigned concern, told me that I was ridiculous for thinking that anything she ever published was even indirectly about me. Everyone I knew acknowledged it was, of course.
But the unfounded accusations continued. Anything I did, anyone I talked to, how I spent my time: they all were questioned.
I became perpetually shell-shocked. My family began to worry about me. They asked me to distance myself from her for my own sanity and safety.
Months later came the last straw for me. An entire weekend was spent with her talking about all the women she knew I’d cheated on her with in the past, all the lies she perceived I’d told, and how I hadn’t done “what a man needed to do” to make her feel loved, feel beautiful, feel needed in the relationship.
What did I do? I should have just let go right then and there. I was so exhausted. But I so desperately wanted to make it work, it seemed like that woman I fell in love with was just around the corner, I just needed to prove myself. I asked her out to dinner. Maybe a date would help the situation.
It didn’t. After she started drinking she began berating me again, this time with me starting to raise my voice, and her likewise, causing a scene in a restaurant we frequented. The night out ended in her screaming at me across a parking garage that I was “not a man”.
I told her it was over, asked her to get out of my car as I dropped her off. She wouldn’t get out. I was totally taken aback at this point, because she was totally unreasonable. At one point, a close friend had suggested I record her whenever she flew off the handle so I knew that it happened and didn’t just ignore it anymore. I started the voice recorder on my phone.
She saw from a distance that I had my phone out. “Who are you texting?” she screamed. She promised to finally exit my car if I came inside and talked to her. Inside her house, I tried to leave several times since the argument grew more heated and she’d push me and force the door shut. “You aren’t leaving” she’d say, physically blocking the door. I tried to leave over and over until she finally stole my phone, screen still lit, out of my pocket, and ran to the bathroom.
I beat her into the bathroom before she was able to get the door shut. But she started shoving me, hitting my chest, and pushing me out of the door – to the point where I was so taken aback she was able to get me out of the bathroom and the door locked.
There I stood outside her bathroom door as she perused my phone. As you can imagine, this was greeted with an extraordinary amount of screaming and name-calling.
I absolutely lost it. As a man who has never been in a fight, hit any human nor animal, broken anything on purpose or damaged property – I kicked down the door.
She was so startled by what happened that I was able to pry my phone out of her hands and sprint out of the house, get in my car, and leave.
I called my parents, my brother, my sister, everyone, hysterical. I had never felt that way in my entire life.
I started getting voicemails from her, ranging from “I love you, please come home” to “I called my ex and told him everything, he wants me to call the police and have you arrested”.
I tried to pay for the door and told her I never wanted to speak with her again. She varied wildly in our conversations after that, moving between saying that I had violated the sanctity of her home, and that I needed to get help, that I was “violent”….all the way to saying we needed to go to counseling, and there was hope for us yet.
I shut down. I couldn’t ride the rollercoaster anymore. I put in my month’s notice at my apartment, packed my things, and left. In one of her past conversations she’d promised she’d never tell anyone about the night with the door, that was way too damaging to my character.
As you can guess she wrote an article about it for everyone we knew to see. Anybody who knew her personally was able to identify who I was. She wrote about how I am an emotionally vacant man, someone who isn’t able to provide anyone with a decent relationship. The article currently has tens of thousands of views, with dozens of comments validating how great of a person she is, and how much of a saint she was for putting up with this awful, abusive, violent excuse for a man.
The prologue of this long-winded journey is this: trust your intuition. You really can identify these people immediately – not by the things they say or the way they act – rather, your reaction to them. If you find yourself constantly scrambling, defending your honor, trying to please them – all while they sit back and reap the benefits – YOU ARE IN AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP.
I wish I knew then what I knew now. I hope my saga helps someone.
In His Own Words is an effort to help raise awareness about the invisible victims of domestic violence, men. If you would like to submit your story, please follow the guidelines at the end of this article.
Counseling with Dr. Tara J. Palmatier, PsyD
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Wow, these accounts are bound by eerily similar threads that make things seem incredulous. That is until I come to the realization the BPD behaviour yields consistent BPD results. The individual outcomes are just a variation on themes mechanistically composed by the disorder.
Yet, the paradox is the BPD person seems to know what they are doing. They seem to know right from wrong and put on greats acts to stir others into believing they are profoundly morally and ethically sound. Your exBPD’s sympathy invoking blogs are a prime example.
My story, well, I’m not at the point where I’m prepared to fully elaborate as I’m still too disappointed with myself to fully let things out. Things were that horrible.
BUT your honest account is giving me the courage to do so, hopefully sooner that later. It also hit a nerve with the Yoga connection. In the beginning my exBPD would compliment me on my fitness level and my passion for sports I enjoy. But after a few months she would berate me for the same activities and for not accepting the only way to physical and spiritual enlightenment, Yoga, specifically the form at her local studio. She also spouted the ” I live in the now, don’t think about the past, or worry about the future” Yoga speak. She used that line to justify what ever hurtful, hedonistic behaviour she choose to indulge in because the next day it would be in the past and she could forget it.
Thanks again for your honest account of a time in hell. You are free now; be thankful for that. I will be back when I can write my account in detail. Hopefully it will help someone else come to terms with emotional carnage in the aftermath of their BPD accident.
BPD’s know right from wrong. But in their minds, bad behavior is a lot more fun, so that’s what they choose whenever they think they can get away with it. That atatement about “I live in the now” is also BPD-speak. They conveniently forget about their bad behavior yesterday so that they can tell themselves that they are perfect angels, and believe it, until the next time they act out again. And they don’t worry about the future because they assume that providing for them is someone else’s job. Don’t forget, in a BPD’s mind, other people are just objects for them to use as they see fit.
Thanks for the reply and your opinion that BPDs really do know right from wrong.
My natural tendency was always to give her the benefit of the doubt-that somehow her mental/emotional problems caused her to loose her moral compass and not realize her wrong and extremely hurtful actions.
After a while I figured out her cheating and lying(which was just the tip if the iceberg). I tried to bring it up in the most non-confrontational, open manner that I could. She would accuse me of being untrusting , paranoid, generally disturbed, and the real cheater. Then her crying and yelling would start.
However, after I’d drop things like I was convinced by her words, I swear she would flush red with a wild glint in her eye, like experiencing a hit of pleasure from “successfully” duping me yet again.
I really great example of why I think I man should never go on a trip with a woman unless you’ve been together for at least six months or more and no major red flags.
My future game plan is date a woman just once a week for the first two months and then only two days a week for the rest of the first year.
I have a feeling doing that will bring out the crazy if she is so and let me get away from her sooner if need be.
Thanks for sharing your story!
Freeforever,
I think that sounds like a good plan, and honestly a normal beginning for a relationship if the woman has a life of her own. In fact, wanting to spend too much time together right off the bat would probably be a red flag in and of itself. She seems to have it all and her life together but then does nothing but spend time with one person she barely met? That doesn’t add up but it’s a hard calculation to do because we all want to believe we are that special. And it’s easy to get caught up in the moment.
What you propose was about what my boyfriend and I averaged when first going out. We dated for 4 years before moving in together. We wanted to be sure of each other, him especially. I mean, his ex didn’t approach the level of crazy as often discussed on this site but from what he’s confided in me, let’s say she falls somewhere in between on the unkind-abusive scale. We did have that instant click and chemistry together and during those early years it was often difficult to take things slow but it was a mutual effort and I respected the fact that he had been hurt in the past, just as I know he’d have respected my boundaries if I’d been the one with the bad past relationship.
There were times at the beginning when I did feel like he was rather waiting for the other shoe to drop with me but I reminded myself that wasn’t about me. That was about the ex. It was a hurdle our relationship had to get passed. It is human to have hang-ups and hurdles to overcome. It is healthy to genuinely get over them, not use them against the other person.
Anyway, good luck to the author and anyone else who has been through this kind of bad relationship. I’m about to miss my bus for work!
billie, you have a good perspective on things. And yes, Cluster B women often want to escalate the relationship very quickly. The sooner they can get you under their thumb, the better, as they see it.
This struck an odd chord.
My exgf never espoused any kind of sprituality that I remember but she never seemed happy. The best way to describe it was that she had a “yearning undefined” (“Heart of the Matter”-Don Henley)and was always looking for something to satisfy it. What peace she had didn’t come from within.
I could see where Yoga would appeal to her. When I found her on FB, of her 4 likes, one of them was a Yoga studio.
It’s weird but with her, I see Yoga as a barrier she’d use to keep herself together, something that separates all the rage, sorrow, or whatever she kept bottled up down there from getting out.
It’s also a convenient mask, though. As in the case with the animal hoarders, holy rollers, etc., it’s a way that they can present an image to the outside world of being the sensitive, caring person that they really aren’t.
Enjoy what you have. There are not enough “good endings” in these stories and you have a good ending. Congratulations!
Like all walks of life, I have noticed a certain gravitation to the Yoga, Spiritual, Hippie, New Age movements by Axis II predators. Most people in these endeavors are passive, “understanding” and “tolerant” of bad behavior than most people. Many “stay on the move” or “on the road” because it is an easy way to stay hidden from the prior abuses the inflict upon others. As well as feeds their superiority complex.
Thanks for sharing your story. So much rings true (My ex also was a writer, and persuasively slandered me with friends.). As I have begun dating again I look for signs of emotional maturity in potential partners. Your story suggests that recognizing health can be difficult early on. I too may have been attracted to yoga teacher thinking they had it all together. But, in the disordered individual, the mask will come off sooner or later, however good things look at first. Good luck to you.
This statement
“If you find yourself constantly scrambling, defending your honor, trying to please them – all while they sit back and reap the benefits – YOU ARE IN AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP.”
is really powerful. Thank you for just summing it up in an incredibly concise and direct way.
“It was never enough. Nothing was ever enough. She would state exactly what she wanted and needed from me in reference to affection, attention, and support. But she wouldn’t do the same with me, she stopped doing all the sweet and thoughtful things she’d done at the beginning of the relationship.”
” I learned to not let my eye stray EVER when she told me that I had a “wandering eye”, and was always ogling the opposite sex.”
I been through this with my ex several times. And the passage in which you entered to his home and when she bloqued the door when you wanted to leave. This episode took back that uncomfortable feeling. I was involved in situations like that with my ex. These moments are very exhausting. I remember that I really felt myself physically tired after those bad moments.
Thanks for sharing your story, and good luck!
Holy Crap! Apparently her yoga practice wasn’t, ummm, “working!” This is another story reminding us that things are often not as they appear. We tend to view therapists, yoga instructors, gurus, ministers, et al as if they are more together than the rest of us. Some of them may be. But it is dangerous (as this story shows) to dump all of our trust in another person/professional just based on their title and/or their demeanor for the first few weeks we know them.
In fact, I think some of the greatest manipulators of all time (think cult leaders) have mastered the art of sucking poor victims in.
*shudder*
Wow…your trip sounds like my 50th birthday.She was plastered at the airport and almost had her boarding pass revoked.On the plane,ended up back with crew/staff partying it up….and we had to make a major alchohol pickup before arriving at the condo.
Not a fun start…but I was blamed for not having fun as I spent the entire trip being bullied and tramatized from public outbursts and drunkenness.
I did want to take a plane trip home.
Also,what is it about abusive women? They seem to like using the bathroom to take their control taking tyrants. I used to have to slide “apology letters” underneath the door…when I had done nothing but speak up for some basic human right.
If you want to find about how telephone use can be controlled in a totally
extreme manner read Beyond Reason:Menna Misgaviage Hill`s book on the inside of Scientology. SSG,you would really get a lot out of it.
Found this site today, what a saviour.
“I was so exhausted. But I so desperately wanted to make it work, it seemed like that woman I fell in love with was just around the corner, I just needed to prove myself.”
This bit just hit me like a crowbar.
I am currently married (2 years) and we have an amazing little 5-month-old daughter. In the 4 years of our relationship I have seen significant ups and downs, the ups were truly amazing. Life was filled with affection, goofy laughter, shared activities, and deep conversation. The downs were worse than anything I have ever experienced, and I have experienced some pretty gnarly s@&$.
I am not currently ready to cut ties with this woman, I love her with all I have (which isn’t enough of course) and feel that if I were to just work harder at it then we could be “happy.” I have been hit, scratched, body slammed, punched in the face, I’ve had to dodge coffee mugs, I’ve had my possessions destroyed, I’ve been threatened with the police and with her nearby brother and father, told to get out of the house, called countless insults, and yet I stick around. She has had both emotional and brief (a few minutes) physical affairs with various men which she denies were even affairs. Just writing this is making me want to gag.
I admit, I took the coward’s route and had an affair about 7 months ago (math-averse readers, it was while she was pregnant) and the SHTF about 6 weeks ago.
I am terrified. I’m a stay at home dad after being nagged into unemployment and I am utterly dependent on her financially.
Can anyone offer any help, strategies, ways of growing my spine back, that have worked for them? Please, for the sake of my sanity, refrain from the easy and destructive “get out now” and “leave her” comments.
Luke, thank you for this post. It spurred me to write this, which is good. Now I don’t know what the hell to do, which is bad.
Check out some of the other blogs on the site index. Start with the early blogs. While you’re working on things, these may help.
•Coping Strategies for Dealing with a Narcissistic or Borderline Woman (June 1, 2009)
•5 More Coping Strategies for Dealing with a Narcissistic or Borderline Woman (June 11, 2009)
•Another 5 Coping Strategies for Dealing with a Narcissistic or Borderline Woman (June 18, 2009)
•Coping Strategies 16-20 for Dealing with a Narcissistic or Borderline Woman (June 29, 2009)
•Coping Strategies 16-20 for Dealing with a Narcissistic or Borderline Woman (June 29, 2009)
Hey Seth – Ditto what Mellaril said… read read read everything on this site that gets your attention. And… consider finding a really good counselor who has credible experience working with fathers having NPD/BPD spouses. You need a pro in your corner as part of your support network, and to help you figure out what you wanna do. Someone who can’t get played by the “poor little me” routine a BP will use to manipulate external perceptions. Off the cuff… I had to accept my ex was kinda like two people…. all the wonderful qualities I appreciated & loved tied to all the terrible behaviors that were destructive. She wasn’t all one or the other. And I decided a life with/near her could subject me to 20+ years of being demonized and abused…. which would eventually take it’s toll on my health. So… she had bats in her attic and I couldn’t chase them away….. and it wasn’t my job… and I wasn’t getting paid for it.
Maybe ask yourself… “what kinda dad do I wanna be for my kid? and… can I be that dad in this relationship, suffering this kind of abuse?”
Seth, I hate to say it, but what she does to you she may do to your daughter.
Can you find someone who counsels BPDs? There is hope for them, if that’s all they really have. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) has been shown to help.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_behavior_therapy
I’ve only relatively recently discovered this site, and what a god send.
The past three years of my life having been a sort of living hell. My ex-partner is borderline and I probably don’t need to tell you the rest. I’ve been pretty much bullied, verbally and violently, with weapons, I’ve been ‘medicated’ and drugged, isolated from friends and family, forced into having sex, had my possessions destroyed, and been stalked. This is the tip of the iceberg.
It was only three weeks into the relationship that she ‘discovered’ that she was pregnant with my son. I had indicated that I would love to have children before this, but unknown to me at the time she had taken this as a ‘must be now’. She had told me that as an act of ‘self harming’ she had pulled her coil out. This was because I did not want to spend that Christmas at her house with her existing family. I told her that it would be very intrusive for them if I were there, and I had only met those children twice at that point. She was already indicating to me that I was to become ‘Dad’ to these children, and putting those ideas in their heads too. The relationship was actually only a few weeks old!
It should have been obvious to me that things were already getting strange but I liked her and hoped that things would develop. Unfortunately for me things weren’t allowed to ‘develop’ and very soon I was deeply part of that family with my own child on the way. This unborn child would then be used to emotionally blackmail me (I’m getting an abortion if you…etc). At the time the thought of having a child was a wonderful thing, but I did not know the extent and depth of the things my ex would do to control everything about me.
Then not 9 months later she is again pregnant after telling me she had another coil fitted, this time it ‘mysteriously’ falling out. This wasn’t before I was arrested on a false allegation of domestic abuse in which I had been the victim. The police and the duty solicitor at the time both knew I was innocent and released me without charge. I was warned she was manipulative and dangerous.
Like the comment above, I always tried to forgive her, thinking it was just part of her mental health problem and that she couldn’t help it. Making excuses for her behaviour which she obviously relied upon.
Unfortunately, both my children are now in the care system and I am fighting both her and social services for them to be placed back into my care. The abuse hasn’t stopped – she is claiming she is suffering post-natal depression that I supposedly ignored which is a complete lie, she is claiming I am psychotic and suffer from bi-polar disorder amongst other things (she has used this method time and time again). She is threatening suicide if I don’t remove my application to be their carer, or if they aren’t returned to her. She also made a further allegation of violence.
>>There seems to be some kind of unspoken pact amongst a great many women, “Thou shalt not speak out against thy fellow woman, no matter how batshit crazy, amoral or sociopathic she may be.” Think I’m exaggerating? Think again.<<
AND… the other side of this coin is that these SAME women will turn around and eat each other alive the moment it serves their agenda. They don't even have to know the facts about any given situation. If they even smell the chance to have a good ole' fashioned "man lynching" they'll jump in and start waving the torches and pitch forks and not even know why. YET they'll turn around and stab each other in the backs, guaranteed.
Jake…..you got it right….keep on reading Shrink for Men…
it will save your life!!’
I ran for my life 3 months ago and will never turn back.
God Bless Shrink For Men.