Today’s post is going to veer off the path of my usual because I feel the urgency to send out a special message to all those whose lives have been touched in some way by abuse. Every day I receive many emails from victims of abuse and the same message is relayed to me over and over again.
I feel so dirty. It must have been my fault. He told me he did it because I made him. I feel worthless. I can’t stand to look at myself in the mirror. I feel used. Continue reading
I can remember the night so well. We hadn’t spoken in several days. He was too busy, away, or was too tired. I was a stay-at-home mom with a house full of kids all ages and stages and I wanted some time alone with my husband. So, for the hundredth time I asked him, “Can you give me some time tonight?” And, for the hundredth time I got a blank stare kind of like the one that translates, “I have no clue what you’re talking about, but I’ll go through this routine again to get you off my case.”
As I waited for him to come upstairs from his office, I was nervous. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to say, but I knew I had come to the end of the rope. I couldn’t go on living like this. We weren’t a couple. We were two people living in the same house with a bunch of kids. The kids were driving me nuts — there were too many of them for me to take care of 24/7 by myself. I was depleted. I felt stretched to the limit. By now, I had seven kids in ten years (not to mention the miscarriages) and I needed the help of a husband. I wanted a companion. I wanted my soul mate!
But, he wasn’t around. And, when he was home physically, he was absent emotionally. Something was wrong and it needed to be fixed! Continue reading
Sometimes you just know…..you know something is wrong, but you don’t know what it is! That’s how I felt for most of my married life. I knew there was something really big that was wrong, but I could never put my finger on it. I just couldn’t figure it out. And, at times that about drove me crazy!
If you’re new to this blog, please start here so that you get the complete details of my story. I was married to one man for almost forty years. He was the love of my life — the one I prayed for God to send me. And, when we exchanged our vows, I intended for that to be forever.
Sadly, life doesn’t always turn out how we’d like. What I didn’t know finally came to light in a most horrible way almost forty years into our marriage. Continue reading
Today I’m going to veer off the highway just a bit and talk about something that has cropped up time and time again in my writings about being married to a pedophile. There was never any physical abuse to me in this relationship, but there was a high level of emotional abuse. And, the question has come up over and over again asking me why I stayed in this marriage. In fact, the question is a nagging one to a lot of people as to why so many women stay in abusive relationships.
I don’t claim to have all of the answers, but I do have the answers that are mine, so I’ll speak to you from my heart. Why? Why did I stay in a relationship that I knew was abusive almost from our wedding day? Continue reading
The last blog I wrote created quite a stir among you as readers. “How did you not see the red flags?” “Why didn’t the church fire him?” “Why didn’t the children he was abusing tell on him?” “Why did you put up with all of that?” “Why?” “Why?” “Why?”
The answer to that question is because pedophiles are brilliant at masquerading who they really are. They are two different people. As John wrote to me in a letter from prison, “I’m sorry you had to find out about my dark side this way.” He knew he was living as two different people, and the one I fell in love with was the one my heart most readily saw and accepted. Continue reading