CJ, you're so right. And ZP has been working on that end of it for some time.

bh,



This is a pretty big indication of your uncertainty. Although you may not envision it happening again, you are clearly not certain that it won't.

Domestic violence is anger mis-management in one of it's cruelest forms. I don't know that an anger management counselor or class can address this form of violence properly. I understand why ZP would see more value in your counseling if you were to visit with a counselor that specializes in DV. I think that is a fair boundary and not a controlling demand.

ManinMotion,

You asked why I want to continue our relationship? What I think your are asking is why do I want to stay married and not seek a divorce. Well the first answer is that I have hope that things can get better between us. There have been many good times in our marriage. I think we can have even better times ahead.

There are times that I want to end it and file. I think that it's too soon to do that yet. Will it be in six months or a year? Both of us have to much to deal with to decide today that it is over forever.

While I am ready to try joint counseling, I am not ready to live with her yet. I have not asked her to come home. The choice to do that is hers.

Ba109,

I don't know if I could ever do it again is as honest as I can get. I can say that I will always try and remain calm when we talk. That I will listen to what she has to say. And respond respectfully to her. All I can do is try. Time will show if I can or not. I already have several years where I did not hit her. And it seems that I need to go even longer. The timing is on her. It will be her choice to trust me.

I am willing to see a DV counselor as well as continue with mine. I trust my counselor to point me in the right direction. If he feels I need additional counseling he will put me in touch with the right people. There are about 10 counselors in the Church’s counseling center. And there are some who deal with DV.

I don't know if I could ever do it again is as honest as I can get. I can say that I will always try and remain calm when we talk. That I will listen to what she has to say. And respond respectfully to her. All I can do is try. Time will show if I can or not.

This comment is enough to convince me that she will never be safe with you again.

ZP,

I know that you are not responding anymore, but in case you are reading....please pay heed to these comments. A woman should NEVER be with a man that cannot promise no abuse....NEVER.

My second husband "promised, swore, and vowed" that he would never abuse me...and he didn't. A man can make that promise and you know that it is true. A man that says that he will "try" <gag> is a man that WILL do it. But they get to say that they "tried" like it is some kind of major accomplishment.

People don't try...they just do.

I know that your relationship with this other person was one of desperation. It doesn't make it right, it just makes you human. I am glad that you have ended that relationship.

Focus on yourself and your children. You can do it.

committed

CJ,

We are stuck in a dance. My W took a step away from that dance and went to my sisters. And I am glad she did. She did what she felt she needed to do.

When I look back over the years I see the cycle you talked about. I was talked down to through my childhood. I was yelled at. I was hit early on and then my dad changed and went to almost no punishment. All that became the norm. It was what I expected and received from so many people. And yes it was where I learned how to treat others. I want out of this dance as well.

I fully intend to continue my counseling regardless of the choices my W makes. I have admitted the wrongs I have done. And every one of them including some that have not made it on the board have been opened up to my counselor. He is dealing with them the way he feels is best. Some things have helped some have not. Some of it I would rather not be posted for the world to see.

Thank you for being so open about your past.

C&L,

I want to respond to your post, not on BH's behalf, but as a former abuser.

If an abuser says, "I will never hit, emotionally or verbally abuse you again" they are a liar. Why? Because they do not know the future...nor does anyone. Learning to change these permissions does take revoking them. That's the first step...finding out all the levels we experience and revoking them at each and every level takes time, a lot of self-examination and ownership.

That's authentic change...not lip service. Abusers are not honest with themselves or others. They can't be...they are too awful to stand, especially inside themselves; hence, the justifications. What I hear BH saying is in his high honesty...that he knows hitting someone is unpardonable. He knows that...and at some level, he knew that before and did it anyway.

So he's not safe to say he won't ever do it again. He's shocked at doing it...justifications fall down in the face of reality. He doesn't make anyone safe to say that. That's fantasy.

He doesn't know his levels, his capability yet, to stay in reality. He's working on it.

As for verbal and emotinal abuse, we all do some of that...comes from our FOO...and he's working on awareness, understanding and revoking those permissions, as well. Predetermining what to do when...which is what he didn't do before consciously. Rudimentary stuff...like "Hurt me and I hurt you back!"

Learning how to amend, to own and where in his system he has old beliefs...takes time and highest self-honesty.

I commend him for not lying, not saying, "Oh, I never" because we didn't think we would EVER. "Today, I will not" is real, manageable, and all we really have.

Those days become years and lifetimes. I understand this is your opinion to ZP. I understand this is what you live by...all or nothing. That's exactly how abusers do it, from their inner child.

Real life happens in the middle.

BH - would you be able to state honestly that your intent is to never abuse, in any way, another human being?

It's mine.

LA

Well that'll set off massive warning bells in anyone who knows anything about domestic violence; this is minimization at its finest. Note the simply ignoring the recent rape to try to make himself sound "not currently violent".

Every once in a while we get a poster who sounds like they're reading from a textbook on domestic abusers, almost like they think they'll get a prize for hitting the greatest number of standard-abuser-patter lines. BH is starting to sound like one of them.

The "It will be her choice to trust me," is another of the standard classics. As the Harley materials spell out over and over, trust is earned, not given; it is a bank account, not a lottery. BH's account is so far in the red he may never see black again, but of course if he keeps suggesting the problem is ZP "choosing" not to trust someone who has plainly proven themselves nontrustworthy, he will get the occasional fool who falls for it.

I doubt ZP will again though.

LA,

"Trying" isn't "doing". When a person says that they will "try" its a back door to failure...with permission being granted to fail.

Wedding vows do not use the word "try" do they?

When a spouse is unfaithful....do they promise to "try" and not do that again? I cannot imagine any BS accpeting that from their WS as the first step in recovery.

I happen to think that a person has the ability to say "I will NEVER do that again" and stick with it. Regardless of the future.

If ZP wants to take "try" as a good measure, that is her right. If she doesn't, that is her right also and it has to be respected. She gets a choice and she doesn't have to accept what he says...or how many hoops he is jumping through. There are consequences for the way that you treat people, and he is getting his.

I would NEVER take "try" as a measure of anything.

When a person resolves to NOT do it, they don't. When a person "tries" to not do it...they fail.

JMHO
committed

The "It will be her choice to trust me," is another of the standard classics.

I have to admit...that phrase sent a shiver up my spine. It's a very passive way of laying the entire thing for this at the feet of ZP. Abusers will usually throw that trust word out there.

He should be saying "I can understand why you would never trust me again. Hopefully, I can earn that trust back with time. Until I do, take care of yourself and the kids, and I will focus 100 percent on fixing me with NO talk of relationship."

He is so afraid that she will move on without him. Again, that's the consequences of treating people poorly, and especially heinously.

That comment still has the chain yanking sound to it.

committed

I'm curious how are you so sure what HE is afraid of? Sounds like an assumption to me.

From what I understand he's getting involved in more bible studies at church, going out to the movies with friends.. getting together with other men from church for various activities..apparently doing things he hasn't done in awhile.

And I'm curious can she promise with 100% certainty if she were to actually choose to TRY to work on the marriage that SHE would NEVER EVER EVER in the future prevent him from leaving when he needed to calm down?

And can she promise with 100% certainty that when she talks to him on the phone she will not yell at him?

I know I can not say with 100% certainty that I would NEVER EVER EVER yell at my spouse or act abusively towards him, and I would be lying not only to him but to myself if I did, just as He could not in all honesty say He will never do that to me either. Why? Because I know that at the very core of who I am as a person --I am a sinner, and the natural inclination of sinners, even those saved by God's grace is to sin, it is a daily battle to die to oneself and to live a Christ-like example...and many times I fail to do and act the way I most desire to act.

So I am curious, how anyone knows with 100% certainly they will NEVER EVER act abusively towards a spouse.

Well, even if HE is learning to be trustworthy, it would still be HER Choice to step out in faith and trust him..

No matter how many changes he makes He will never be able to MAKE her trust him..so yes, it would be HER choice to step out in faith to trust Him again or not.

Where have I said I have not or will not move on with my life? I have several freindships with guys from my church that have been able to grow since she left. I am avaliable for more hours at work. I have joined several clases at the church.

I am not sitting at home doing nothing. My life has been busy. And I like it. I just wish she was closer so that I can help with the kids.

It is her choice to whether or not to allow him the opportunity to earn her trust again. But the barrier of entry for earning her trust is astronomically high because he raped her just a few short months ago (last February). And, I don't think anyone in good conscience could suggest that she re-engage after that type of abuse until she has some absolute safe guards in place.

BH, I think you have to manage your expectations to be really, really, really, REALLY low that she'll ever trust you again because of that. If you're serious about it, you're looking at years rather than months. And, you're looking at intensive therapy for her to get over the trauma of the assault before she'll be in any position to be able to sit across a table from you and negotiate anything.

Until then, focus on yourself and on letting go of as many of the abusive patterns you've established throughout the years as you proceed on your journey. The EA aside, which seems ended, ZP has seemed to have detached from his life and left him to his own stuff. He can go to DV counseling or not -- it's his decision. It seems like a wise place to go to me -- I'm not sure I understand even IF he has an objection to that let alone what that would be.

This is a messed up situation. Right now, it's too unsafe and volatile for her to allow him the type of transparency that's usually recommended after an affair. Her physical safety (her right not to be raped/abused) trumps his need for transparency and access to her channels of communication. It would be irresponsible for BH to be the one she's accountable to because of his abuse towards her. The risk to her life and safety is simply too high (the most dangerous time for abuse victims is when they try to leave, that's when they're most likely to be killed or seriously injured).

The good news is that it sounds like she's working with professionals who hopefully can fill that role.


Mys

Of course she couldn't. As with everything else, he's been lying about what happened with that behavior. For many of those incidences, it looked as though he was likely to harm himself or someone else, and she tried to keep him from leaving until he appeared to be under enough control not to be a menace run amok.

A number of times it was about the fact that they lived in an extrememly dangerous neighborhood, and he would want to go storming off in the middle of the night to very dangerous places plainly behaving as though seeking danger was part of the point. That last bit is not ZP's assessment -- it's mine. I think that once he figured out that putting himself in harm's way would freak her out, he got off on doing it.

And here's why I think that: When she stopped trying to prevent him from leaving, because MB told her that's bad, he complained that it felt like she no longer cared about him. Cue more temper tantrums on his part.

So, "can she promise with 100% certainty if she were to actually choose to TRY to work on the marriage that SHE would NEVER EVER EVER in the future prevent him from leaving when he needed to calm down?" Of course not. He's a violent man and refusing to plead with him not to leave can mean MORE tantrums, so why in heaven's name would she promise that?

"And can she promise with 100% certainty that when she talks to him on the phone she will not yell at him?"

Sure she can. I hope to high heaven she won't.

Part of her recovery, and one of the key concepts a woman in her position has to learn first, is that her sense of when to bow to the cultural requirement of "niceness" is broken. She's spent years trying to be nice to someone who brutalizes her.

She has to re-learn how to make decisions about when the demands of a situation trump the benefits of niceness. The first step in that process is to break down her excessive guilt over ever not being "nice", and the best way to do that is to learn to talk some serious smack back to her batterer and feel good about it.

Never yelling at a plainly dangerous person is not a good or useful goal.

I read this and I thought about it, some. All abuse is bad - emotional, physical, sexual. But that does not mean they are all on the same, level playing field. Yelling and name calling is bad - I don't do much of that but I wouldn't put myself at 100%.

Hitting in anger? 0%. I don't do it. Nor have I been hit in anger by my H. (I'm excluding all the accidental bumps that everyone does.)

Being sodomized after stating that she never wanted to be sodomized again? That ranks up there to me in the Things you don't just "forget" and that you just don't ever do. I think no raping at all is a pretty healthy boundary for a relationship.

I just can't make the connection between the scale.

If she can't promise to never, ever yell at him again then he's excused from promising to never, ever rape or beat her again? (Because, if she fails, then that gives him license to -- do what exactly?) That simply isn't reasonable.

Mys

MOS, were you there physically/visually witnessing all that occurred between these two? This tale is stirring up the lynch mob, but it's like you're a reporting puppet with someone else pulling the strings.

Laura, do you really expect me to fall for that kind of verbiage?

Do you really think the other people here will fall for it? You must have a low opinion of them.

We are not silly enough to buy your argument that a battered woman declines marital counseling out of fog rather than the very real danger to her life.

Nor are we silly enough to buy into the notion that just because you throw terms like "lynch mob" and "puppet" around, that they somehow define what is happening here.

Why does a battered woman escaping her batterer bother you so much that you post such strange arguments?

Oh well, it doesn't matter. I got a good laugh out of your post anyway. You've seen enough of my posts over the years to know that trying to throw negative epithets at me doesn't work to silence me, so you must be really tripping to think it'd work this time. I'd have thought you could come up with something more creative than "puppet". How about a little color in the "better shut up or I'll call you something"-isms?