Mennonite Central Committee

Roberta's Story

June 2007

It was so nice in the beginning. We shared a lot of interests, philosophies and laughs. About 4 months into it, I found the geography of the relationship began to change and soon I was totally lost in a foreign land. I'll never forget when the change happened. We both volunteered at the same place on Friday mornings and one day as I was leaving at the end of my shift, I playfully called out to him a favourite goodbye of my then young nieces, "see ya, wouldn't wanna be ya!" A storm passed over his face and he requested through a clenched jaw to see me in the back. He led me to a back room where he ordered me to sit in a chair in the middle of the room. He remained standing and yelled at me for my disrespect and rudeness. I was speechless and felt like a chastised child.

It wasn't long after that that he began writing me letters detailing all of my faults and the things he wanted me to change about myself. He presented his lists to me under the guise that he was trying to help me become a better person. I received the first such letter with humiliation and a promise to him that I would try to be better. I tried very hard to eradicate the things he didn't like about me; everything from being too negative or impatient, to how often I made eye contact, to my sleeping habits, to what order I ate my food. He used himself and his habits as the yard stick of "normal" and wherever I differed from that yard stick, I was expected to conform. I tried to change many things about myself but the lists kept coming. I felt tired and demoralized and confused as to why he wanted to be with me in the first place if I was so "faulty". It never occurred to me that I didn't have to change. I was petrified he would leave me if I didn't keep working on what was "wrong" with me. He wanted perfection from me and I thought I didn't have any choice but to comply.

There were many great things about the relationship that kept me there. But I was always on edge and nervous about the next thing he was going to get mad about. I never knew what would set him off and the unpredictability was very stressful. We would be going along just fine and in love, and then all of sudden he would blow up and I would be "in trouble" again for something I said or did. I tried to anticipate what would make him mad and modify my behaviour but it never worked. It didn't seem to matter to him how much I changed, he just went onto the next thing he didn't like. I was drowning in his expectations of me. I felt empty and worthless most of the time. It's hard not to when the person you love is handing you a list of your faults every week.

I knew I had serious self-esteem issues and I believed that if I could just start feeling good about myself and be a better person, everything would work out and he would respect me. He repeatedly told me he just wanted to help me be kinder and more gentle. He even made me pray outloud to ask God to help me be a better person. I tried so hard to be these things but my efforts were never good enough.

Armed with the belief that love can conquer all and his promise to go into anger management, I agreed to marry him. I soon realized that our dating relationship was a cakewalk compared to our married relationship. I began to count the days in between fighting, "2 days of no yelling, 3 days of no yelling..." I never got very high. Because he was not a citizen of Canada and couldn't work at first, I was the breadwinner. When I came home, I was expected to cook supper, clean up, do all the chores, pay the bills, do the grocery shopping and everything else while he sat on the couch complaining. I just couldn't do a single thing right in his eyes. I didn't clean right, I didn't buy the right brands, I didn't choose the correct ripeness of bananas. I wasn't even allowed to buy Kleenex because Jesus never have would bought such a luxury item. He refused to let me invite family or friends over to our apartment and began to limit my time with them. He continued to give me lists of what was wrong with me.

I reached a place of total darkness when I found that I had nothing left of my original self to change. I reached down into myself and found nothing. I sat up in bed night after night, crying to God in my journal, wondering why my husband hated me so much. Was I really such a horrible person? I had lost all sense of who I was. I crumbled when he told me that he did me a favour by marrying me because no one else would. His abuse escalated quickly, calling me horrendous names, giving me the silent treatment for days on end, closing down my contact with other people, destroying our apartment in a fit of rage, breaking my things, ripping up my artwork. I lost all sense of what was normal and worked hard to hide what was going on. I was ashamed and embarrassed.

I started to read books about how to save your marriage and found a chapter on abuse. With growing horror, I read the signs of abuse and realized that 95% of the list was happening to me on a near daily basis. I was then horrified by the thought of being divorced at 25 years old. After refusing to let me go back to school and trying to kick me in the stomach, I knew that I had to leave.

It has now been 10 years since I left my marriage. The effects of the emotional abuse were many, some immediate, some long lasting, some will be with me for the rest of my life. I have come to understand that his criticism and abuse had nothing to do with me and everything to do with how he felt about himself. It has taken me the full 10 years since I left to understand that my low self-esteem did not cause the abuse; that I didn't make the abuse happen - HE did. I learned an incredible amount about life and myself from this experience and I came out of it strong and resilient.

 

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