My story with M- LONG

Ever since I stumbled upon this site a few months ago I have been thinking about "my story" all the way from the beginning almost 10 years ago. It is so hard to believe that this back and forth, I love him and hate him craziness has been going on for a decade. Now, there are 2 children involved and it's no longer about just him and I any longer. It hasn't been for quite sometime as my oldest is 7 and I'm starting to see the effects of this dysfunctional marriage on my children and I know deep down (really deep down)it is time to go. I'm writing this at a pivotal time in my life. I have been approved for an apartment and I'm planning my exit. I have left before many times staying with my mother and always shortly returning as my mother suffers from borderline personality and living with her in her tiny apartment has never worked out so well. Also my narc is really great at ignoring me long enough for me to cave, and then sweeping in and being the perfect husband until I've moved back in and then the bull crap stats all over again. When will I ever learn?

My story begins as so many of yours did. Our relationship was a whirlwind. We were engaged and married just 3 months after first meeting one another online. I had just failed at living on my own. I was working and going to school full time and had just kicked out a boyfriend who was a deadbeat. I eventually couldn't afford my place any longer and was wrapped up in those ridiculous high interest money loans to pay for gas, groceries and rent. I went home to my dysfunctional home with my mom and step dad and was depressed I couldn't make it work on my own. I was 21. I began dating online and I found my N. He sent a letter to me which piqued my curiosity. He was a professional poker player and he seemed smart and funny. I later learned he sent out that same email to lots of women as he threw that up in my face during a fight saying that I wasn't the prettiest girl he saw online but I was pretty enough to satisfy him but not beautiful enough to turn him down. Wow. I thought his profession sounded so interesting. Yet I learned later that he just happened to be lucky enough to win at a gambling addiction, and that I wasnt a match for his brilliant IQ. As he said in one of our last fights, I could never "out poker" him and he would always win.

Shortly after we were engaged the typical alarm bells went off which were ignored. He came on way fast and proclaimed love way soon. He bought me a beautiful ring, paid my debts to the instant cash loan people and basically saved me, or so I thought. I would pay dearly for his help. As my mom put it the other day, I'm just a shell of who I used to be. I'm almost like a little girl as I have lost all ability to make decisions. I found out after we were engaged that he broke off his prior relationship to be with me. She claimed pregnancy but it came out that was a lie. My N cursed her out on the phone when she told him she was keeping the imaginary baby. I secretly called her later and told her I was so sorry how he had spoken to her and the mother of his child deserved respect. I pleaded with her not to let a man speak to her this way. Ha! That woman who said those things seems so distant to me. She is gone. I now believe I deserve most of my treatment from my N.

Things started to progressively get weirder but nothing compared to what happened once we were married. My husband flew myself and my mom and step dad to Las Vegas so we could get married. I was so blissfully happy to have someone care about me so much that I ignored most of the red flags. I loved the adventure of it all. I loved how my husband took care of me and basically took care of everything. My father didn't fly out to Vegas as he saw right through my N. He disagreed with the marriage so he wasn't invited to the wedding and basically was cut out of my life for a while. My step dad walked me down the aisle and then the honeymoon was over before we even made it home back to Kentucky. My husband got extremely drunk while we were in Vegas after my parents had went home. He became scary. I said something to make him mad on the honeymoon and poured a drink on me. And then proceeded to lock me out of the honeymoon suite for hours. I finally had to get security. I was humiliated. But here I was 22 years old, just married and sitting outside my honeymoon suite in a fancy hotel hugging myself and crying. Security let me in the room and there he was calmly sitting on the bed with a phone book looking up attorneys to have the marriage annulled. I was humiliated. I had convinced everyone but my dad that this was a good man. And here he was abandoning me when the marriage certificate ink hadn't even dried! I begged him not to leave and to please sleep off the drunkenness and enjoy our honeymoon. He agreed and the next day we acted as if the night before had never even happened. When we arrived back home the abuse escalated into the physical. The littlest things would set him off. My memory is foggy about the incidents that occurred right after we were married but I remember bits and pieces. I remember him dragging me through the house naked with me clawing at the walls and him throwing me on the front porch naked and in the snow. He threw my purse on top of the roof so I couldn't leave and I hid on the side of the house until he let me back in. He would kick and abuse our little Yorkie. He choked me, peed on my clothes and forced himself on me. I finally left and got a restraining order after he hit amd kicked me in my face. I drove to the hospital dizzy from the blows to the head. I left him. I moved back home with my parents and fell into a depression for a few weeks. I couldn't understand why I still wanted to be with this man. My family told me how nuts I was. I snuck around and met with my N after a few weeks of no contact. The sneaking around was exhilarating. I knew it was wrong but I couldn't stay away. I have since learned that his abuse solidified a trauma bond and we were forever bonded. I tried to forget about the abuse and my N was back to putting me on a pedestal like before. He acted fast, convinced me to dropout of school because I really didn't know what I wanted to be anyways and I was just wasting my time. Then he moved us to Las Vegas away from everyone. I was eager to get away also. I hated seeing people who knew about the abuse. I wanted to pretend like we were healthy and normal. I could fake it in Las Vegas. At least for a while. He eventually succeeded at alienating me from all of my friends that I had made on Vegas. He cussed out some of them and when they tried to help me get out of the relationship he forbid me from seeing them and made fun of them and convinced me they were jealous of us. My best friend in Vegas whom I was hesitant to let go of eventually I let her go as he told me one night he wanted to have a threesome with her and that everytime we had sex he fantasized about her. I cut her out so I wouldnt lose him. i became pregnant after one year of being in Vegas and during the pregnancy things were normal. No physical or verbal abuse. I went to bed at 8 pm every night as I was exhausted and very ill with hyperemesis through most of the pregnancy. Late into my pregnancy I found porn on his computer. Hundreds of files downloaded. Disgusting things. I was horrified. I cried hysterically for days and confronted him about it. He assured me he would stop with the porn. he never did. The porn escalated into full blown cheating.

After my son was born I was desperate to be a stay at home mom. I quit my job and we flew home to Ky to live in a cheap apartment so I could stay home. The abuse started up again. Maybe only physical two or three times a year and never as extreme as the first few months of our marriage. In this apartment he eroded me self esteem verbally. Calling me fat, ugly, big nosed, bad in bed. He left marks on me but I hid them. I convinced myself that my son was to young to be effected. (Yeah right!!!) sometimes the abuse would happen when I was holding him. I left several times only to move back in. My husband began posting ads on Craigslist looking for sex. He became very paranoid about the government and was very mean. He hid upstAirs in the loft and smoked pot all day. He never once held down a job. He always got me to come back with a surprise vacation or promises of things going back to normal like they were during my pregnancy. I always caved. I left once and got an apartment on my own and he came to pick our son up one day and he cried and cried to me. He had never employed this tactic before. I was shocked and my heart hurt to see his pain. He moved in with me and I quickly became pregnant with our second child. He was always very kind during my pregnancies. I supported us financially at this time. I went back to work after I left and continued working until I had our second child. Things were relatively normal at this time. I quit work as my husbands poker turned around. He was winning again so his mood improved drastically. I forgot to mention his mom had confided in me that my husband was bi polar. And my husbands moods went up and down with his wins and losses at poker. There was never any stability. When he won he was manic and on top of the world. When he lost he wouldn't get out of bed. He was incredibly impatient with the children. He yelled constantly. He was never physical with them but the yelling took its toll. The perfect standards we all had to live up to took its toll. We walked on eggshells to avoid upsetting him so he wouldn't fly into a rage over the smallest things. Wasting milk in the cereal bowl would cause a rage, leaving the door open letting hot or cold air in the house for a sec would get a scream, throwing away a recyclable....the list could go on and on. I would tire of the rages and rage back on occasion. That is when the kids would really get an eye and ear full. He spat on me in front of the kids. He would kick us out. But he never really meant it he would say.

I went back to work part time as I had got so sick of hearing how much of a loser I was because I never worked. Even though at times I had supported us. I met someone at work. Now I see he was a narc as well. I liked him a lot. We exchanged texts over a few weeks and I kissed him at work. I refused to go any further with him other than the kiss and he broke it off with me and I quit my job and never saw him again.. I told my husband. He would have never found out but the extreme guilt I felt was all consuming. I think it was Gods grace that protected me at this time. I have no idea why he didn't kill me. He was furious and this started an all out war between us. I will never know for sure if my behavior fueled his behavior to cheat or if he had been cheating all along. My husband claims i caused his many indiscretions with my kiss but I will never know for certain. For the past two years I have discovered around 10 times that he has went to massage parlors for hand jobs and blow jobs. Also, he contacted old friends on facebook asking for sex and relationships. One woman wrote me and forwarded all his advances. She said he harassed her every time she was on facebook. I was so disgusted, embarrassed and sad. Then he tried having sex with a best friends wife. My husband and this woman texted and had phone sex. He told me a lie and went to her house to have sex. The story goes that she wouldn't let him in her home when he arrived. I have no idea if this is true or not. But this was the most humiliating of all the cheats. All of our mutual friends knew because this was a best friends wife. I was forced to entertain these people after the affair. They would come over and we would all smile and pretend. My self esteem was long gone by this point.The last time he cheated just happened last week. I noticed that instead of his usual massage parlor (which was such a blow considering I'm a licensed massage therapist) he called escorts. I guess the blowjobs weren't good enough. He needed more. My husband has never been satisfied with my body. He complained when I had baby weight and complained when I lost the weight saying my breasts were gone and he thought I was becoming to self centered because I worked out daily. I could never please him. And that's what hurts so much. When I write about the abuse I put up with im kind of numb to it. It doesn't bring pain. But what does bring pain is the day in day out mean, hurtful, selfishness that he displayed. The coldness, the lies, the perfectionist standards that none of us could ever live up to. The devaluation when we couldn't. The confusion of being called the crazy one this whole time. The blame shifting, saying i caused all of the problems because my family was crazy and I was crazy and how I had one foot out the door the whole marriage. How unhappy and pessimistic I was, how messy and unorganized, how unstable and unpredictable. He always called me bug eyes when I talked because my eyes would get big when discussing something. Not necessarily out of anger but sometimes out of excitement. I could never talk to him without him putting me down. "Calm down bug eyes" he would say. "You're just to much for me to handle right now" he would say. So basically I never got to say anything. He yelled over me in every fight. He is so loud. I'm so looking forward to the day to walk out of my house and not have to duck my head in shame because of what the neighbors heard the night before.

Now comes the hard part. Sticking to my decision. Not letting the cognitive dissonance in my head persuade me to give this marriage another shot. And then once I've left facing the wrath. he has threatened to take me down. have my massage license taken away. He said he would fight for custody. Even though I can count on one hand how many baths he has given our kids. The thought of letting my kids be alone with this man when I've quit giving him supply has paralyzed me. I'm afraid for my children's well being and for their lives. I have no proof of the events i described. He has told me that a lawyer friend had the incident that occurred in the beginning of our relationship expunged. I have little money and few resources. My apartment is 30 minutes from my sons school because I can't afford to live in our current part of town. Im worried he will use this in favor of his custody battle. I'm so scared and uncertain about the future. If I really told people what went on behind closed doors no one would believe me. They would think I was crazy and I probably am. As I read back over this post im so disgusted with myself that I haven't left yet and that I've stayed so long. No one understands and I myself don't understand.