Control

Oh how do I start? Ex never met a mountain he wasn’t willing to die on. Every single ‘infraction’ garnered an equal reaction. No matter how petty or small, he was as equally angry over the small things as he was over something big. His thumb was always on everything and everyone except his oldest daughter. She had an unspoken pass.

Ex was/is terrible on so many levels. Silent treatment was ‘the thing’ from 3 days in. It started out as a few days here, a few days there and grew in intensity and length at a furious pace. By the last few years of our marriage his silence was lasting 6-8 weeks at a time, with maybe 2-4 weeks of non silent treatment before the next session started. No eye contact. No acknowledgement I was speaking to him, literally pretending I didn’t exist. Quite the feat while in the same room together. He was dedicated, I’ll give him that. In the beginning I was so confused and worked hard to get him to speak to me. I learned early on it wasn’t worth my efforts. My efforts never gained me anything other than an explosion of rage. He would scream why don’t you get it? I have nothing to say to you. All while looking like the devil himself. The first time I saw his eyes turn solid black, all the brown disappearing, with one side of his mouth curling into what I later learned was his signature smirk and that same corner of his mouth twitching on repeat, it was terrifying. The air just left the room. Then one day out of the blue, with no warning he would be cheery and acting as if the previous weeks had never taken place. No explanations, no apologies, no nothing. In the beginning I was so happy the silence was over I just let it slide, but later on the switch flip just grated on me. To be treated in such a base disrespectful manner and to never know why. I wanted answers. I wanted it to stop. If I questioned him what I got was rage and a return to silence.

I didn’t drink alcohol when we first got married. He professed similar sentiments. As with everything else, this was simply mirroring. The drinking started out slow. He would buy beer 2-3 times a month. But it was never just a beer or two. It was 12 packs at a time. He drank so fast, downing one after another and the drunkenness hit him fast. The beer morphed to 5 litter boxes of wine. I think mostly because it was cheaper. He could put a whole 5 liter box down nearly nightly. By the end he was drinking liter bottles of saki. I rarely saw him buy or drink hard alcohol. I feel like he thought there was some stigma associated with going to the liquor store, and he could pick up the beer, wine or saki at any grocery store.

Slowly the drinking morphed to once or twice a week, eventually it became nightly. His mouth lost all inhibitions. Drunken fits of rage exclaiming all the things that made him mad, all the things out of his control that he believed rage would bring back under his control.

Our finances: financial abuse.

Not a term or concept I was familiar with while we were still together, or really realized the full extent until we were living separately. It started years ago. But as with the slow burn, the frog and boiling pot, I didn’t feel the fire until I was fully engulfed.

I wasn’t working outside the home but was receiving child support for my 4 oldest children. There were no jobs in Ex’s job field here locally, so he took a rather low paying entry level job once his unemployment benefits ran out. Ex had put his student loans accrued prior to our marriage into deferment when he lost his job back east, and kept them in deferment through unemployment and continuing while working the current job. He let his car be repossessed. I don’t remember the reasoning behind letting it go. Money was tight, but I don’t remember it being so tight we couldn’t have swung having a second car. My van was paid off so it was our only car payment. This was probably control too. I was very much stuck at home with no car to drive.

I was in charge of paying the bills. We added Ex to my bank account the child support was being deposited into. Ex wasn’t making a significant amount more than child support. He made more than a few comments about how it was wrong that my ex husband was contributing almost as much as him to our household. Ex was thoroughly emasculated by this fact, almost jealous. Ex didn’t ask about bills, didn’t make an effort to share in the budget decisions. Didn’t seem to want to look at the bank account at all.

As vacancies opened at the company he worked at, Ex applied and little by little moved up the ladder, and after several years eventually landing a job in his degree field. As his wages increased so did his interest in our finances. He started making little snarky comments that I am spend thrift. I was wasting money. He made a comment here and there about probably needing to restart his student loan payments but he never followed through. He also never asked me to take care of it, nor gave me the information to have been able to complete the task. I had never paid any of his payments. I knew nothing of the processes, his logins, nothing. Honestly, I believed, and still believe, this was 100% his responsibility to set up his repayments. I would have been more than willing to make the payments once he figured it all out. This subject started one of the worst arguments of our entire marriage. He had received a letter, or maybe an email, from the Department of Education stating something about his payments were in arrears. I had no idea what he was talking about, but apparently it was my fault. He was screaming he had told me to take care of it. Take care of what? Logging into his department of education acct with the credentials I didn’t have and applying for various repayment plan types I knew nothing about? That wasn’t my responsibility it was his. The more I defended myself, the more he screamed. I had made him look bad, I wasn’t a responsible person and couldn’t be trusted. He screamed he had obviously made a mistake allowing me to have access to his money. He was in a blinding rage.

He managed to get it all taken care of himself pretty quickly. He put the payments on autopay. Easy peasy. But not. His anger over the situation stewed and brewed and festered.

Ex was still battling it out with his Ex-wife. Hearing after hearing. Ex had used credit cards to retain two different attorneys. The bills were piling up. He had a serious falling out with the first attorney after spending a fortune. The falling out was over Ex’s displeasure with his representation. Ex-wife had the court rule in her favor. Ex filed a formal complaint with the state bar association. He represented himself for a bit, then retained another attorney but again lost ground in court. We were approaching $20,000 in credit card debt almost exclusively due to attorney fees.

Around this time Ex’s grandmother died. He received I believe in the vicinity of a $25,000 inheritance. After the inheritance deposited, Ex told me to pay off all the credit card debt, so I did.

Ex never let go of the student loan issue. Eventually he declared he was taking over the bill paying and told me not to touch our checking account without discussing with him first. I was now having to ask to go to the grocery store, get gas, etc. Not that he ever apologized, but I guess he must have realized I wasn’t as big a spend thrift as he had accused me of being. Because now his snarky unkind remarks shifted to how I wasn’t bringing in my fair share. I wasn’t contributing enough to the household. I was a drain on his money. I needed to figure out how to bring in more money.

I couldn’t win for all the losing. With his blessing, I took a seasonal part time job to make some extra money for Christmas. Ex was gung-ho until he figured out it meant he was on kid duty every minute he wasn’t at work. He was angry my job interfered with his work, his leisure. He wanted me to quit. So I did.

Im not sure why I stayed after his next move. Ex walked in from work one evening with that smug shit eating smirk on his face. He said he was letting me know he had opened a new checking acct in his name only and had his pay checks diverted to that acct. He further stated he had gone to our bank and had taken his name off our joint acct. He then presented a spreadsheet outlining who was to pay for what. He was to cover rent, utilities, his own car insurance, his own car payment and gas, his own clothing and shoes, and his own cell phone. Ex was making decent money by then.

I was to cover my car payment, my car insurance and gas, my cell phone, our daughter’s cell phone, 100% of the groceries and sundries for the house, all 8 kids birthday presents and parties, any presents for parties our kids might want to attend, all entertainment for the kids (movies and such), all clothing and shoes for all 8 kids and myself. I wasn’t working outside the home, but I was still receiving child support for my older 4 kids at the time. I told him there wasn’t enough money to cover. He said that was my problem. He would not be covering my laziness any longer. I told him when I had gotten job he was angry it inconvenienced him. He said find a job and put the kids in daycare. I asked him who would be paying for daycare? He said once I was working and earning a paycheck I would pay for it out of my earnings. I asked him what was he going to be doing with all the extra money he was going to have every month. He said it was his business.

He password protected the online access to his new acct. And told me his money was none of my business.

I told him I wanted a divorce. I wanted him to leave the house. He told me he was smarter than my ex-husband. He would fight me for the kids, he had no intentions of ever paying me support. He would make sure I ended up on the street.

Isolation

When Ex first moved to me I introduced him to my friends. I made dates for friends to come over for dinner. One by one Ex picked apart every female friend I had. He never said much about the husbands but about the wives he had a lot to say. I would invite the couples over for dinner. Ex’s behavior was bazaar. He would kind of hang around the edges not really engaging, and then after we ate, he sat down in a chair/couch and went to sleep. Leaving me to entertain both spouses. After they left for the evening, Ex got up and gave me all the reasons he just can’t ‘stomach’ the wife. Eventually they all stopped coming over.

The silent treatment and Ex’s either inability or distain for having couple friends are the two biggest surprises to manifest early on in our marriage.

I don’t believe Ex has any respect for women and that fact showed up immediately. He spoke derogatorily about every single female friend I had, but not just my friends, but also my mother, my eldest daughter after she became a teenager and young adult, even his own older sister. He made it his mission to ruin every relationship I had. And the men, the men I was accused of looking at provocatively. Ex told me it was disrespectful to go out with friends, even for just a lunch or dinner meet up. Ex picked apart our pastors, nitpicked sermons and eventually declared he would not attend church anymore because the sermons were so boring he couldn’t stay awake at church.

Ex never shared much about his work days. I shared my work days with him though. Eventually Ex accused me of having an affair with my direct supervisor. So I stopped sharing about my work day.

Later on in the marriage Ex wanted to hang out with a male work friend. This was really a first. He had shown no interest in having friends and had actively sabotaged my friendships. Ex’s friend was married and had children. Ex made no effort to have a couple friendship relationship, but the friend made the effort. So every few weeks they invited us over for dinner. Ex started pretty quickly to undermine my establishing a friendship with wife. He was brutal in his critic of her. I really liked her and this was upsetting and disappointing. Why couldn’t he like anybody? I sometimes joked to her the Ex appeared to be dating her husband. Ex’s total focus was on the friendship and he barely acknowledged my existence. I think in Ex’s own weird way he was ‘friendship (love) bombing’ his friend. In the year or so leading up to my divorce my friend confided that Ex spoke really awful about me. I was hurt and too embarrassed by his behavior to tell her he spoke pretty awful about her too.

My friend had seen a lot over the years. I don’t remember the exact year, but few years prior to this, Ex and I and our two youngest kids were invited over for dinner. Ex and his friend went upstairs to hang out after dinner. Wife, kids and I were downstairs. The guys were drinking. Husband mentioned at one point that he was a little concerned at how much and how fast Ex was drinking. He was getting visibly intoxicated and he had asked him maybe it was time to slow down a little. Friend was showing no signs of having drank too much. Friend said Ex wasnt listening and when he stopped going downstairs, Ex then took it upon himself to go get his own. I told friend he was unfortunately witnessing what Ex does at home. Out of nowhere Ex ran down the stairs and out their front door. And just kept going. I yelled where are you going? His answer? Road March. And then he disappeared into the darkness. They lived in a large subdivision in the hills on the outskirts of town. We lived a mile or so closer to town but still on the outskirts. We all just looked at each other. Friend said he was concerned because Ex is incredibly intoxicated. We waited a few minutes to see if he came back. Nope. Friend and I loaded my two kids in my car, I called my older son who was home and asked if he had seen Ex. Nope. I told son I was bringing the younger kids by and drop them off while I look for Ex. We didn’t see Ex on the way. After dropping the kids off and telling son to call me if he saw Ex, we headed down the road towards town. The road is 4 lane road and is kinda steep with a wide concrete sidewalk. It is well lite with street lights the entire length. We could see Ex probably a half mile further down running at a pretty fast click. Then down he went face first into the concrete. He immediately popped right back up and kept running. I drove a little past him and friend said come get in the car. Ex stopped running and turned toward us. His appearance was a bit shocking. I suspected the fall we witnessed was not his only fall. Both knees and shins were solid blood. As were both hands and elbows and one side of his face. Friend got out of the car and said get in the car. Ex started repeating himself over and over. ‘You don’t understand’. Friend said no I don’t, come get in the car and tell me about it. Then ex turned right and headed up the hill into a field falling yet again, then he again disappeared into the darkness.

Not knowing what else to do, I took friend home and hoped for the best. Son called right after I dropped friend but before I made it home. We had a short but steep driveway. Son was watching out the upstairs window and said Ex attempted to run up the driveway, but face planted, popped right back up and ran in the front door. The master bedroom was downstairs and that’s where he thought Ex had gone. Sure enough. I found Ex in our king bed under the covers snoring. I pulled the covers to take a look. Ex was fully dressed complete with his shoes. He was covered in blood, dirt, grass, twigs. I called friend to let him know Ex was back and then I slept on the couch. I was mortified. Ashamed, embarrassed but deep down glad someone else had seen Ex’s drinking and just how bad it was. Ex worried so much about his image and controlling everyone and everything, always asking us how our behavior would make him look and here he was passed out cold after a completely out of control drunken episode out in public.

The next morning was the same as every other morning after. No acknowledgement the previous night happened. I stripped the bed and washed the sheets.