In situations like this the person is usually asked why they stayed with the abuser? Why they put up with all the rubbish and abuse. So why was I with him? Aside from knowing he was good on the inside somewhere in there, he also had his kind moments. He would do dishes and fold washing and tell me really lovely things about how he felt about me. He was passionate and really into me and for the most part really big on compliments. Not your standard trying to sucker the girl in type either. Genuine and spontaneous compliments like wanting to grab a camera and take a photo of me at that precise moment. Telling me I looked good in what I was wearing. Bringing me random gifts like flowers he’d picked on the way to see me. We use to go shopping and try on fancy dresses just so he could see me in them. He was a real sweetie, a kind soul. He was a great kisser and amazingly good in bed. Because of things he’d witnessed he new things about sex beyond his years! His admiration and lust for the female body was insatiable. He was a veritable porn king who gave me my first orgasm and first experience with ‘parking’.
He would also deliberately ogle other women openly in order to make me jealous and in order to give me a sense of knowing my place. He could leave any time he wanted, he would tell me. There were girls at parties giving him blow jobs on weekends he wasn’t at my place. He pointed out a bus stop where some girl had given him a blow job. I wondered what type of adventurous and promiscuous girl would do such a thing? Even going so far as to organise one of his girls to phone my house once to speak to him, then spending his time on the phone obviously flirting and talking sex with her. I picked up the other line secretly and listening to her talking about how she couldn’t wait to see him again and give him head.
He was a game player. But he was playing games with the wrong person. Since he was abusive I never found myself really falling for him. My friends were already starting to drift away and I didn’t want to lose them. There was no way I wanted that life for myself. So I held my emotions in check. Him constantly losing his temper, telling me other girls on tv were so much better looking than me and that nobody but him was ever going to settle for a girl like me [him repeating verbatim all the things he’d heard growing up] – made it easier for me. He would also try and tell me not to do the things I like. Don’t listen to that music. Don’t watch that program. Don’t sing. And I would say, “There’s the door if you don’t like it”.
I would phone those people he said bagged me and ask them straight out if they did and find they had not even spoken to him. I told him he’s welcome to get head jobs from some tramp at a party if that’s what she feels like doing. I told him I knew that I was not ugly like he said and that I believed his compliments more. I also told him if he kept it up I’d say good-bye.
This last statement used to be one of our key argument triggers. He didn’t want me to kick his ass to the curb. He wanted to me to love him and put up with him because part of him knew he deserved it. It was constant turmoil and I can’t imagine what it felt like to actually be him, stuck in his head with all his awful memories.
The decider came when he and I were watching tv and there was a one year old that we were looking after. While watching tv the phone rang. A girl friend of mine to talk to me. The one year was walking around the perimeter of the lounge room holding onto the sofa, chairs, table and walls working his way around the room over to me. When the one year old made it to the tv, taking his sweet time with his little baby legs, the boy gets up, swipes at the baby and says “Move!”, toppling the baby across the room. Unfazed the one year old crawled back to the tv and took up where he’d left off. I put down the phone and screamed at him, “How dare you! Don’t you ever lay a hand on that baby ever. You need to go. Now!” and I ordered him out of the house. I knew then I could never be with him. It’s one thing for him to torture me with his insults and anger, his paranoia and breaking my things. That stuff was done to me. Someone big enough to stand up to him. But to lay a hand on a defenseless child, he’d have grown into a full blown abuser down the track. I knew that then. I knew there was no fixing him. He would be promising to never do it again forever and the longer I kept taking him back the worse it would get, and the more he would have me right where he wanted me. Squashed and broken with only him as my world. I deserved better. Any children I had deserved better.
I have always believed it is one thing for an abusive woman to put herself in that situation by accepting it to begin with, but to enter defenseless children into the mix, I draw the line. If the woman can’t defend herself how will she defend the children.
to be continued...
to be continued...
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