Listen to the Shrink4Men Radio Embed: Relationship Stages, Abusive Women and the WTF Moment
Hello Everyone,
Thanks to everyone who caught the show live last night. Thanks also to the folks who called in — Bill, David, and Kevin.
I’ll be taking next Monday, November 21, 2011 off, but will be back the following week, Monday, November 28, 2011. The topic will be Why Does She Ruin Every Damn Holiday.
Next week, I’ll announce the details and submission guidelines for the very first (and maybe the last — who knows) Shrink4Men Radio She’s the Grinchiest Contest. Basically, I’m looking for stories about your worst and or funniest holiday experiences/meltdowns/temper tantrums/rage fests/“There’s no way in hell we’re spending Christmas/Hannukah/Ramadan/Kwanza/New Year’s/Festivus/other denomination holiday with YOUR family!” with your abusive, high-conflict wife, girlfriend, ex, husband’s or boyfriend’s ex, mother, sister, aunt, etc.
I know some of you faithfully record your partner’s tirades. If you have holiday-themed recordings, I’ll play them on the air (provided identifying information like her name or your children’s names is dubbed out).
Here’s the embed of last night’s program, Relationship Stages, Abusive Women and the WTF moment:
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14 Responses to “Listen to the Shrink4Men Radio Embed: Relationship Stages, Abusive Women and the WTF Moment”
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I’ve been listening to the radio embeds for the first time over the last couple of days. There’s a lot fantastic material in them!
I had to comment on this one because I recognized a lot of my own behaviors in this episode, and also recently had the second ‘WTF’ moment. Specifically – Why the F haven’t I taken action and GTFO? WTF am I still doing in this relationship? The light bulb finally turned on in 12/2008 FFS!
I keep coming up with reasons to stick around another week or two, but the idea of another 10 years like the last 10 is terrifying.
Thanks, Mr E.
Oftentimes it’s fear, inertia and/or a sense of learned helpless that keep people stuck. What do you want in the future? Try to visualize that and then go for it.
On my wedding night when I discovered my wife had lied and completely mislead me about her attitudes toward sexual intimacy. For religious reasons, we had remained virgins until our wedding night. Unfortunately, for religious reasons and massive pressure from my parents and our religious leaders, who, in hindsight, cared more about the symbolism of our marriage than about us, we remained married instead of getting an annulment and doing a “start over.”
Oddly, I now believe this “close call” so freaked out my wife that she tried and that, in some ways, made our divorce worse since I saw what she could have been had she been normal.
There were several WTF moments, especially one eight years ago so monumental that even our marriage counselor was surprised–she’d never heard of it before. Leading up to this, we’d had in a way a renaissance in our marriage. It wasn’t until the marriage was almost over that I realized how much I’d misinterpreted that “renaissance”–that the increased emotional and physical intimacy was the result of her craziness, not a genuine change. In fact, I now believe that she was aware at some level that her behavior was abnormal and had attempted to change, but that change only made things worse and eventually caused her to emotionally abandon me.
Despite leaving my religion by that point, the importance of sticking with marriage was deeply embedded in me, plus I was worried about my kids. I often look back in regret that I didn’t leave my wife in 2003. On the other hand, about two years ago before my divorce, my oldest daughter thanked me for sticking with her mom and that despite all our obvious problems, it helped her through some tough times as a teenager.
Another point. While my oldest was a daddy’s girl (we bonded early on), my youngest was a mommy’s girl–she wanted little to do with me. This honestly and absolutely wasn’t due to anything my ex-wife had done. Yet, at thirteen, one day out-of-the blue my youngest hugged me goodnight and we’ve grown very close since then, to the point where I think it caused the rift from my then wife to grow stronger!
(My theory is that my ex’s attempt to alienate our oldest completely failed and she didn’t even bother trying with the youngest since the alienation appeared to be in place. However, my ex doesn’t dare try that now–I’ve been amazed about this.)
In hindsight, I should have ended the marriage right there, but
, but it wasn’t until almost two years ago when I was on the verge of suicide that it hit me that my wife was the crazy one.
Jason wrote, in part:
“…religious leaders, who, in hindsight, cared more about the symbolism of our marriage than about us…”
It has struck me that some marriage counselors seem to consider the marriage to be more important than the people in the marriage. No doubt there are times when marriage counseling can be helpful to couples who’ve hit some bump in their relationship. But when a marriage counselor keeps working to keep two people together without ever really addressing the issues that may arise primarily from one of them, then the counselor has made the marriage more important than the people in the marriage. I think marriage (or any committed relationship) is there to serve the people in it and is not meant for the people in it to serve the marriage to the exclusion of what is healthy for the individuals. Marriage is just a relationship, one that has been formalized by a series of legal rights. Marriage is not magic, is not in and of itself sacred.
There are plenty of relationships that never get to the point of two people getting married. They end, for one reason or another, and I think for the most part no one thinks of a person who has had several committed relationships that ended as being somehow a failure. I’ve wondered why it is, though, that so much judgement is attached to a marriage that has ended, as if whoever gave up on a marriage was a failure.
The people in the marriage are very important and the emotional and physical health of each of them is very important. If one of the two is unhealthy, and it is harming the one who is not, then I think the focus should be on protecting the healthier one. And that preserving a marriage should never come at the expense of the people in it.
My WTF moment struck me when I was engaged to my future ex-wife: she was staying at my condo for a week and her mother had called me asking for her phone number. I immediately gave it to her not knowing that she had barred her mother from calling her because they just did not get along. Sure enough her mother called her immediately and she began cursing and swearing at her own mother on the phone, right in front of me. She ended the call by yelling “Don’t ever call me again bitch!” and then proceeded to change her phone number.
I remember going to the bedroom and looking out the window in a state of shock thinking, ‘Is this the girl I am going to marry?’. Unfortunately I decided to overlook this transgression, as well as many others afterwards, thinking that she would never treat her own husband this way. Little did I know what I was in for as soon as the ring when on her finger: she treated me much worse and it only escalated when my son arrived.
This just goes to show that one should never overlook the way she treats others because this is the way she will eventually treat you x 10.
Mine screamed at her mother as well. But, what was really telling as to what my future would hold, were her conversations with her first husband-whom she married twice. She would have these god awful scream fests with him on the phone. I used to sit in the other room and snicker. Little did I know….I would take his place.
I think that’s called foreshadowing, Chester ;^D
Happy Thanksgiving
My WTF moment was at 4 AM when during a tirade she backhanded me across the mouth. First and last time she ever got physical. Im am so outta this marriage.
With my first wife, who was serially cheating(unbeknownst to me), my WTF moment was when I confronted her with the fact that she had been out until after midnight 112 out of 180 days during the six months I tracked it.
her response ” So, I have more friends than you. Of course i ma going to take more time out.” We had two toddlers who, often ,w ould not lay eyes on their mom for days. At that point, I realized that her value system(essentially that she was the only human being in this family) was so distorted that it was useless even trying to get through to her.
I had another WTF moment about a year ago, when a sibling, out of the blue,, sent me a nasty letter filled with lies, raging at me about a variety of things. I had known, due to her drinking, poor job history and abuse of another family member, that something was wrong with her. But, this letter, along with the info I had gained on BPDs and NPDs. made me realize what it was.It all made sense.
I had a couple of WTFs that I let go by, but a big one was when my NPD ex and I were our first night on our big overseas adventure. I had a panic attack, because of a whole lot of reasons, but to summarize all I needed was some empathy to help me deal with an overload of distress.
His response
“For fuck sake, you are just being stupid”
There were lots of WTF moments in my relationship. If I think about them now, I clearly see how twisted things were, but being my first relationship and also having a low self-esteem and some dependent personality disorder traits, I did not. It was after almost 3 years, 4 failed breakup attempts from my side, reading several self-help / relationship books, many articles on the Internet and, most important I think, a book addressing self-esteem issues, that I got the strength to go away.
I tried a lot to make it work, I sacrificed myself and my needs for most of first 2 years and actually got to the point where I though I was crazy for wanting out, showing interest in other persons like they where the fresh air after getting out of the basement. I also had a weird thing about being embarrassed to go with her to social events and didn’t understand why.
Here are some WTF moments that I remember (21 yo when I met her, university student):
1. One evening we meet up and went out. She was behaving passive-aggressive all the evening and after we got out the bar, and asking her for several times “what’s wrong?” she had a burst of anger and told me she would burn my clothes because they’re ugly.
2. Our second date, before being together, she started talking about the importance of sex and later on that evening she started talking about abortion and was really upset to the point that I felt accused for being a man.
3. Once, at a family meeting with her siblings, she got very angry because of something her grandmother said so she took her purse, walked from the table and threw the purse on the floor and ran away.
4. She used to yell and call me names for different things, telling me I was immature, a child etc. I was so terrified I couldn’t say a thing. This happened for almost a year before I reacted and stopped this behavior. She also used to get very angry with me and than expect that I would react in some sort of way to calm her down, and get angrier because I didn’t.
5. She was very sexual from the start, she was not a virgin, but decided that we should not have sex before marriage and 8 months into the relationship she wanted to get married. I got caught in this but managed to avoid it with heavy damage. The result: 6 months of accusing me and my family for killing her dreams and future, fighting with my father. She also asked of my to run away from home and go to her family because her father would finance my university studies…. WTF!
6. Oh and this: she told me several time she would commit suicide because of different issues. Once after I told her that probably we should not marry yet.
7. She told me once that in high-school she used to make cuts on her legs with a razor.
8. Asked me at 11PM to go cross town to take her a slice of bread because she would faint if she didn’t have bread in the house.
9. We once lost the train and when she realized it she started crying in desperation.
There are a lot more. I always felt that she was like a black hole and whatever I did it was not enough and I had this persistent feeling that I was carrying blocks of rock on my shoulders.
After breaking up I felt happier than ever. I’m still not sure if she is BPD but I’m glad I made it to walk away!
I’m back!
Glad the frigging holidays are over. Where do I start? My oldest son has been smoking pot for a number of years that we know of starting when he was 14. Fast forward. He’s 17 and just completely out of control. Verbal abuse. Destruction of property and now dealing to some great extent. We had every single outpatient program and family counseling we knew of try to get our family back on track. He flat out told us he would never stop and he then started coming home after 2AM and was then thrown out of school for behavior twice. He failed Five (5) classes and was even rejected by a military school.
My wife was on top of things (she’s never worked a day and has now taking up animal rescue almost full time as her “hobby.”)She refuses to work. My other son is in private school so she has virtually all day to rescue cats. From what? I don’t know
So, it’s obvious my son needs serious intervention to the tune of over $150,000, so I propose in the kindest way I can “Are you willing to consider increasing our income, or cutting expenses (her hobby which i for the most part am paying for). She asked for specifics. I told her her cell phone and the $150-$300 / month for her pschycotherapy. Seems my years of begging her to work is considered “abuse.”
She went bat shit!
Then my son is found dealing big time and is thrown out of school. i come home that night to her bag packed, crying and threats to leave. I already made up my mind to have our son removed, so there was no reason to leave if she had only spoken to me 4 hours prior before when all that shit hit the fan.
i had the whole intervention plan done in four hours, but she had somehow disappeared while i was making phone calls and texts.
I called her. She was out helping someone with a cat rescue……I went NUTS. Simply told her to remove her head from her own ass and get home. She did.
point being. She shifted gears so quickly my head exploded like JFK in the limo. So, now we are in for the pound is she is taking little interest in researching the rest of his therapy/recovery – which I doubt will work at all.
In the meantime, her family is all over me and flat out call me a terrible Dad…where did they get that information????? i.e The reason my son is messed up is becasue I have not lived up to all their standards.
One writer was considering suicide. It honestly did occure to me, but my other son and i are very close in the most healthy relationships. he’s my rock, so that nonsense is out, but in my depression (you are not your thoughts) the pain was pretty unbearable. I am worried about the mental health of whomever is reading this though….. I was home during the holiday and I swear all I heard were manic phone calls about cats cats and more cats.
We had a HUGE blowup on New years eve. We covered everything……again. Next morning. She apologized!!!!!! HELP!
Wow, this is my wife, going to her room during Christmas cause my mom showed up, yelling at my daughter and me during birthday partys creating a scene. Calling family members and going off on them because someone called looking for them on our phone. I was not allowed to discuss my sisters pregnacy because my wife was having difficulty getting pregnant. We were just rubbing it in. According to my wife I have been secretly planning to move my mom in without her permission. My mother has been nothing but nice to my wife and she has selected her as the evil in the family. My mom avoids comming by when my wife is home. She is sullen and will not speak to her or picks at everything mom says, finds some insult in it. I mean innocent comments. Every holiday has drama if my family are comming over, picking at what they say and do. We were gonna pick my 6 year old niece up and take her to Chucke Cheese with my 6 year old daughter for her birthday, because it might make us 5 minutes late my wife went balistic and screamed and had my daughter in tears, we ended up driving right by where she was waiting, I could hear her sobbing thru my sister phone. She was on time but my wife didn’t want her going. yes I have a book on rages over nothing, constant verbal assaults on family, meltdowns in front of friends, constant concern my family might attend events. I have 12 years of this 10 year old maturity issues, being baited into arguements, picking at my comments for insults where none exist. We all walk on eggshells, watching what we say, my family has gone out of their way to tap dance for her. She refuses to let my mom babysit, comming up with lame excuses. She has 2 personalitys, one which is angry sullen, yells at our six year old even scolds the 5 month old for crying while she changes her diaper. Yes no holiday is safe, no special occasion, I have started to volunteeer to work and allow her to go to her parenst house , which she still refers to as HOME even after 12 years of marriage. Her mother placates anything she says, remember she is NEVER at fault for anything, its always someone else pushed her buttons. Wow I can’t believe there are more people like her out there.
Hi Everyone, I’m in the process of a divorce right now and I had my WTF moment but was so intimidated by my wife I could never leave. Now I stand to loose everything, house, car, stuff but I’m OK with that. It’s only money. I don’t want to end up in court paying out spousal support forever because the system works that way to a court as they seem to be blind to emotional abuse.
What rots me is that because she makes less than me she is entitled to this stuff… Has anyone ever heard of any court cases where a man escaped the financial burden of paying out an abusive person and got this person to leave them alone.