“It was the like the sting of a thousand bees,” he said. “Individually, one isn’t extremely painful. But after getting stung several times, eventually enough was enough.”
The first time it happened was when he was between apartments and staying with me in my shared apartment on Huron Street. He accessed my computer and did a search for his name and found a letter I had been writing to a friend. He confronted me later, accused me of cheating on him (I had mentioned in the letter that I was attracted to a friend of mine) but we worked things out. I stopped using my home computer for anything personal after that. He successfully completely alienated me from my friends. He was convinced my male friends all wanted to sleep with me and couldn't be trusted. He would disparage my female friends. My life consisted of him, and then Nathan. The only time I wasn't with him was when I went to work. Even then there was a period of time when he insisted on driving me to and from work. He was convinced I was going to sleep with a male coworker. He was taught jealousy early; his mom had left his dad for another man.
I can't remember the first time I loaned him money but it was to do with his rent, or with needing to pull together first and last when he moved. I do remember cosigning for his car loan, and I do remember that I gave him a credit card for my account. Later on the car would get repossessed and I would bail him out. Even later I would find that he was hiding the credit card statements from me. I remember fighting on the way home from our honeymoon because our phone had been cut off for non-payment. I cashed in part of my RRSP to pay for the damn wedding that I didn't want to have (he wanted a party and attention and I wanted to elope and not be bothered). I paid for his suit and for even my own engagement ring and wedding band. Once N was born, he tried to get me to cosign for a second mortgage, just months after we had bought the house. He wanted to pay off his student loans and loans from his parents and sister. I refused to sign. I don't think he spoke to me on the drive home. When the marriage fell apart and we sorted out financial stuff, he tried to convince me that he was entitled to part of the $40,000 I had put in from my RRSP as a down payment. I was smarter by that point and refused to even discuss it. For years and years later he would complain that I had left him with nothing, that I owed him for leaving him with nothing.
I do remember that the binge drinking started when I got pregnant (planned and executed on the first try). He would disappear to the neighbour's place next door. On the night of my work baby shower, a month before my due date, I was driving home with him and a coworker and they jumped out of the car at a bar. I didn't see him again until 4 am or so when he stumbled in completely wasted. As my due date neared, I would get angry when he returned home drunk, reminding him that if I went into labour, he wouldn't be of any help. He would fall asleep on the bathroom floor and I would leave him there. One night he fell asleep in the bed, snoring. I used a spray bottle of water to wake him up and convince him to sleep elsewhere. We laughed about it in the morning. I didn't know I should have seen this as trouble brewing.
In my attempt to prepare for the eventual labour, I had signed us up (and paid) for a hypnobirthing class. Even that he managed to make all about himself. I cried in the middle of class one night, in a panic that it wasn't working and wasn't going to work and he talked about how helpful he was finding the techniques. On the day that I went into labour, coming home from a full day of work and then an aquafit pregnancy class, he asked if I was ok and then informed me that he would be next door at the neighbour's house. I laboured alone in front of the TV. He did eventually return home, but I think it was the neighbour's wife who insisted he had to.
After having N, the binge drinking continued and it was worse because we absolutely could not afford anything extra like booze. Even better, he would come home drunk and tell me what a terrible person I was for not supporting him, for making him feel that he needed to get drunk in order to tell me his true feelings. The few times that I videotaped him on my camera I felt bad the next day and deleted the clips. I wish so much I had kept those.
As predicted, I was hit hard with PPD. For D's part he would change a diaper...if there was a family member around to tell him what a good dad he was. When I cried over breastfeeding issues and begged him to go buy formula, he said "we can't afford it". I returned to work when N was 5 months old, for my sanity and because I was the one earning the steady paycheque. Later on, D would insist that N was waking up every night and he was going in to take care of him because I was sleeping through it. It was months after leaving that I realized that this likely never happened. There are a million other incidents of gaslighting, too many to remember and list. He would lie all.the.damn.time and try to make me believe that I was a bad person for doubting him. I still don't know whether everything he ever told me was truth or something he made up. Was he abused as a kid, or was that attention/sympathy seeking? I will never know.
The day after I had to call the police on him for trying to take my car and attempt suicide, I had only my coworkers to talk to, and they were far from supportive and understanding. I moved out of our bedroom after that, and never moved back in. Each night I would curl up to sleep on the futon in N's room. I spent my work days trying to find another place to live and frantically thinking about how I could pay for it, as I was then paying the entire mortgage. He refused to move out. When CAS showed up to do a welfare check of N, he was obstinate, refusing to give them N's doctor's info. I was happy to share. When the CAS workers took me aside and asked why I wasn't making eye contact with him, I shared that I was done with the marriage, that I didn't know how to get him to leave, or how to leave myself. Their advice? I should stay because if I left, I would lose my claim to the house. I have so much HATE for CAS, those workers and their advice. The best thing I could have done at that point was to go to a shelter. To learn that all these things were abusive. That there was absolutely nothing healthy about this relationship.
I went over our finances like a goddamn forensic accountant and realized that he was putting almost zero contributions into our joint account, which is why there was never cash for groceries. He had also not been paying the bills and we were in deep trouble. He had been continuing lying to me about everything: doing his taxes, contributing to the account, paying bills. I knew at that point that I could never trust him, that I needed to get out. He refused to start earning more money. He wanted me to commit to staying before he would make any changes.
There was an attempt at counselling. It failed. I knew I could never be happy as long as I stayed with him. I knew it was not a healthy relationship model for N. I remember telling him that I wouldn't let a friend treat me like this, so why would I stay married to someone who I couldn't even consider a friend.
Everything was my fault. If he didn't get a gig, it was because I had made him late for the last gig booked by that agent. I don't know how I managed to get through the nine month period between me moving out of our bedroom and closing on the sale of the house. I met a man and he buoyed me up and reminded me that I was not the terrible person that D was making me out to be. That relationship started up well after me ending the marriage, but D will maintain that I cheated on him. I might as well have.
Abuse doesn't end when you leave. He undermined me in a thousand different ways and now my kid lives with him. I'm still confused as to whether I'm a toxic parent, or whether it's parental alienation. Even when N split his time 50/50, I was the one figuring out how to pay for childcare and day camp and shoes making sure I only took jobs with good health plans. I would end up buying clothing for both homes, as half of what I would buy would slowly disappear to his house, since he would tell N to bring clothes with him. I've only now paid off the debt he created when he stole from the joint bank account overdraft, which then grew to a debt over $10,000, still with my name attached to it. I pay child support to a man who went on welfare because parenting full-time was "too hard" to balance with work.
I have an informal diagnosis of PTSD based on this relationship. Left unacknowledged and untreated, it absolutely affected my ability to parent. So much of what N did was triggering. I'm on a waitlist for diagnosis and services, but I believe that N's abuse of me led to C-PTSD. Not that knowing that helps at all, because he has successfully alienated N from me. I don't think that relationship will ever recover.
The first time it happened was when he was between apartments and staying with me in my shared apartment on Huron Street. He accessed my computer and did a search for his name and found a letter I had been writing to a friend. He confronted me later, accused me of cheating on him (I had mentioned in the letter that I was attracted to a friend of mine) but we worked things out. I stopped using my home computer for anything personal after that. He successfully completely alienated me from my friends. He was convinced my male friends all wanted to sleep with me and couldn't be trusted. He would disparage my female friends. My life consisted of him, and then Nathan. The only time I wasn't with him was when I went to work. Even then there was a period of time when he insisted on driving me to and from work. He was convinced I was going to sleep with a male coworker. He was taught jealousy early; his mom had left his dad for another man.
I can't remember the first time I loaned him money but it was to do with his rent, or with needing to pull together first and last when he moved. I do remember cosigning for his car loan, and I do remember that I gave him a credit card for my account. Later on the car would get repossessed and I would bail him out. Even later I would find that he was hiding the credit card statements from me. I remember fighting on the way home from our honeymoon because our phone had been cut off for non-payment. I cashed in part of my RRSP to pay for the damn wedding that I didn't want to have (he wanted a party and attention and I wanted to elope and not be bothered). I paid for his suit and for even my own engagement ring and wedding band. Once N was born, he tried to get me to cosign for a second mortgage, just months after we had bought the house. He wanted to pay off his student loans and loans from his parents and sister. I refused to sign. I don't think he spoke to me on the drive home. When the marriage fell apart and we sorted out financial stuff, he tried to convince me that he was entitled to part of the $40,000 I had put in from my RRSP as a down payment. I was smarter by that point and refused to even discuss it. For years and years later he would complain that I had left him with nothing, that I owed him for leaving him with nothing.
I do remember that the binge drinking started when I got pregnant (planned and executed on the first try). He would disappear to the neighbour's place next door. On the night of my work baby shower, a month before my due date, I was driving home with him and a coworker and they jumped out of the car at a bar. I didn't see him again until 4 am or so when he stumbled in completely wasted. As my due date neared, I would get angry when he returned home drunk, reminding him that if I went into labour, he wouldn't be of any help. He would fall asleep on the bathroom floor and I would leave him there. One night he fell asleep in the bed, snoring. I used a spray bottle of water to wake him up and convince him to sleep elsewhere. We laughed about it in the morning. I didn't know I should have seen this as trouble brewing.
In my attempt to prepare for the eventual labour, I had signed us up (and paid) for a hypnobirthing class. Even that he managed to make all about himself. I cried in the middle of class one night, in a panic that it wasn't working and wasn't going to work and he talked about how helpful he was finding the techniques. On the day that I went into labour, coming home from a full day of work and then an aquafit pregnancy class, he asked if I was ok and then informed me that he would be next door at the neighbour's house. I laboured alone in front of the TV. He did eventually return home, but I think it was the neighbour's wife who insisted he had to.
After having N, the binge drinking continued and it was worse because we absolutely could not afford anything extra like booze. Even better, he would come home drunk and tell me what a terrible person I was for not supporting him, for making him feel that he needed to get drunk in order to tell me his true feelings. The few times that I videotaped him on my camera I felt bad the next day and deleted the clips. I wish so much I had kept those.
As predicted, I was hit hard with PPD. For D's part he would change a diaper...if there was a family member around to tell him what a good dad he was. When I cried over breastfeeding issues and begged him to go buy formula, he said "we can't afford it". I returned to work when N was 5 months old, for my sanity and because I was the one earning the steady paycheque. Later on, D would insist that N was waking up every night and he was going in to take care of him because I was sleeping through it. It was months after leaving that I realized that this likely never happened. There are a million other incidents of gaslighting, too many to remember and list. He would lie all.the.damn.time and try to make me believe that I was a bad person for doubting him. I still don't know whether everything he ever told me was truth or something he made up. Was he abused as a kid, or was that attention/sympathy seeking? I will never know.
The day after I had to call the police on him for trying to take my car and attempt suicide, I had only my coworkers to talk to, and they were far from supportive and understanding. I moved out of our bedroom after that, and never moved back in. Each night I would curl up to sleep on the futon in N's room. I spent my work days trying to find another place to live and frantically thinking about how I could pay for it, as I was then paying the entire mortgage. He refused to move out. When CAS showed up to do a welfare check of N, he was obstinate, refusing to give them N's doctor's info. I was happy to share. When the CAS workers took me aside and asked why I wasn't making eye contact with him, I shared that I was done with the marriage, that I didn't know how to get him to leave, or how to leave myself. Their advice? I should stay because if I left, I would lose my claim to the house. I have so much HATE for CAS, those workers and their advice. The best thing I could have done at that point was to go to a shelter. To learn that all these things were abusive. That there was absolutely nothing healthy about this relationship.
I went over our finances like a goddamn forensic accountant and realized that he was putting almost zero contributions into our joint account, which is why there was never cash for groceries. He had also not been paying the bills and we were in deep trouble. He had been continuing lying to me about everything: doing his taxes, contributing to the account, paying bills. I knew at that point that I could never trust him, that I needed to get out. He refused to start earning more money. He wanted me to commit to staying before he would make any changes.
There was an attempt at counselling. It failed. I knew I could never be happy as long as I stayed with him. I knew it was not a healthy relationship model for N. I remember telling him that I wouldn't let a friend treat me like this, so why would I stay married to someone who I couldn't even consider a friend.
Everything was my fault. If he didn't get a gig, it was because I had made him late for the last gig booked by that agent. I don't know how I managed to get through the nine month period between me moving out of our bedroom and closing on the sale of the house. I met a man and he buoyed me up and reminded me that I was not the terrible person that D was making me out to be. That relationship started up well after me ending the marriage, but D will maintain that I cheated on him. I might as well have.
Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back to the place I was before
'Relax' said the night man,'We are programmed to receive.
You can check out any time you like,But you can never leave!'
Abuse doesn't end when you leave. He undermined me in a thousand different ways and now my kid lives with him. I'm still confused as to whether I'm a toxic parent, or whether it's parental alienation. Even when N split his time 50/50, I was the one figuring out how to pay for childcare and day camp and shoes making sure I only took jobs with good health plans. I would end up buying clothing for both homes, as half of what I would buy would slowly disappear to his house, since he would tell N to bring clothes with him. I've only now paid off the debt he created when he stole from the joint bank account overdraft, which then grew to a debt over $10,000, still with my name attached to it. I pay child support to a man who went on welfare because parenting full-time was "too hard" to balance with work.
I have an informal diagnosis of PTSD based on this relationship. Left unacknowledged and untreated, it absolutely affected my ability to parent. So much of what N did was triggering. I'm on a waitlist for diagnosis and services, but I believe that N's abuse of me led to C-PTSD. Not that knowing that helps at all, because he has successfully alienated N from me. I don't think that relationship will ever recover.
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