tell me i am not mad…

[Bridget Jones Is Free]

Gaslighting, accusations, weird comments, inventions, strange behaviour, projection, childishness, wanting to ring 101 about me, telling me I torture him, contradicting himself, I got the lot tonight. Financial threats too.
So tell me I am not mad, because it sure feels like I am going mad and crazy…i can’t follow the conversation, it leads nowhere, tell me I live with a deranged person…tell me I will find the courage to leave him and follow this divorce, what is wrong, why is he like that, what have I done to end up in a crazy relationship like this??? The longer it goes on the less I understand…i try to ignore, stay silent, accept, forget, avoid, minimise, philosophise, treat it with a pinch of salt, stay at a distance, laugh about it, hope against it, silence my thoughts about it, deny it, take no notice of it, till I don’t know what method to use to be able to cope, live, function…
I have become so numbed, so blind…but I can’t reconcile what he makes me experience with what I call normal…
It’s not normal, it’s just not right.

[Serenity]

Bridget,

Missiepie’s words from another thread might help:

“The issue with gaslighting is that we try and fight the irrational with rational and it doesn’t work. Thats why evidence providing is futile. My councilor told me that all my efforts with my ex was me not accepting that were was something fundamentally wrong with him. She put it a great way. She said, if his leg was broken you would recognise the issue and hand it over to a doctor, you wouldn’t try and treat it yourself. Each time I tried to rationalise with my ex I wasn’t accepting that he had a fundamental issue. I was trying to treat a broken leg with a band aid.”

You want him to behave rationally. You want him to stop this circus. You want him to accept fault where it is due. You want him to be normal, when he is essentially not being normal and has never chosen or been capable of behaving normally. But they aren’t rational, or self-reflective – they project. It’s all they know.

[Bridget Jones Is Free]

So why do they appear normal outside and keep this attitude with us inside? Why???????? What do they gain? Why do I have to loose everything for this kind of treatment? My kids, my home, my work, the whole lot!!!

Is it me who is not normal? Is it me who seems to have personality problems? Is it me who behaves like that? I recall his numerous texts, mails, words, and all I can remember is the more I read the more numbed I become, there is no other solution but to become silent and numbed…Just let it go in one ear and out the other…What’s in store for me in the future if I stay? What’s going to happen? What kind of life am I going to have?

When I loose a parent, I already know I must not rely on him for compassion, one word too many from me and he will tell me I repeat myself, God knows I have heard that so many times in my life when I explain something painful…So when a situation like this eventually arises, how will he behave? Can people really have so little empathy they end up abusers? I am so strong and so resilient I invent ways of coping and ignoring and silencing myself I am unable to recall the exact words used during an episode like yesterday, I end up wondering why I see a DV lady and what I am supposed to say to her. I feel I am drowning in my own perplexity…

I will either take the full resolve to completely block the lot and carry on regardless or I will come to some form of sense and see no other way out but to separate. I am even thinking of changing job and look for an exit that way, see people, become part of a team, join the ”normal” world out there…How sad is that when the circumstances in which I live and work are perfect for our family…?

I honestly don’t know what goes on in my own head any more, I can’t voice any thought, I don’t really want to see people, I prefer to sit and think, yet the more I do that and the worse I feel. It is just not normal, not normal one bit. I can’t feel for the two of us, feed feelings for the two of us, adjust for the two of us, react in a particular way for the two of us, change for the two of us, I can’t re-educate his emotionless brain and feed it ”normality”. I never thought love in a marriage was about behaving like he does…! For so many years I felt something was not right, I overfed the expressions of emotions because he had none of the right ones! If I confronted him with it, it was full blown arguments that owed me to get slapped and strangled, knives thrown on the floor, drinking…I don’t even feel about the strangling like it was something abnormal, it has all become part of my ”scenery”. Denial, normalisation, God knows?

I am telling you, it will take another physical assault for me to learn my lesson, I keep telling it over and over again. I wake up, work, go to bed, wake up again and do the same again and wait for the 5-6pm time when he comes back. And my head fills with a painful sensation of inability to recall anything. I am totally numbed.

Yesterday he was sharpening knives…I find all this so weird…Sheer association of circumstances but he didn’t even cook. I am going crazy.

[martian29]

Hi there, I think the answer to your question of why they appear so normal outside when they treat you so differently is all about having power and control.

I used to think my ex couldn’t control his rages but he could go the whole time without behaving that way when his family came to stay. They are fully aware of what they are doing and it is all about gaining power and control over you. The gaslighting is all about twisting everything to make you feel like the inadequate one, the one who is mentally impaired, forgetful and unreliable. You then start to doubt yourself and wonder whether it is you that has the problem. IT IS NOT YOU. From all that you describe your feelings are normal. HE IS THE PROBLEM.

I have been there where you are now and I couldn’t see it for what it was, thought I was going crazy. I knew nothing of what I know now. I felt just as you describe. It’s taken me years to get there and I still have really bad days like today. I think perhaps it has taken me so long as I was in denial for so long after leaving, blaming myself, feeling like a fraud as he never actually hit me much. It’s only when you are away from such an abusive relationship that you can really start to learn and see the situation for what it was. My ex still has the power to make me doubt myself and further abuse me with just a few words, which is why I choose to have no contact. Hope you can get away from him when you feel ready and find some healing and peace in your life.

[Author]

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