abuse

on being a bad wife

My twitter account gained 700 followers in the last week, so I knew that I’d been shared somewhere. Whether a meme page or on reddit, the only reason I gain a few hundred new friends on social media is because someone is circulating a picture of me from 3 years ago, juxtaposed with screenshots from my onlyfans.

The followers arrive silently, and a few days after landing, they start to pipe up.

A man named JoeRoganDisciple commented on my post, “I swear to God, this woman posted nudes on the day her husband killed himself.” I find it best to engage these kinds of commenters directly.

I did post nudes the day my husband died. I had been posting nudes daily for months, amassing enough money to finally be able to leave him. That morning I had woken up on a fold out couch of the AirBNB I was staying in, the one where I’d been for 6 weeks, the one he didn’t know the location of.

I had taken videos the night before of me masturbating – in my experience, divorcing your husband and living in paralyzing fear every second of the day can make you surprisingly aroused and in need of an outlet! I was both horny and in need of money.

I edited my content and posted the videos before I got the kids up. I drove them to school that Friday the 13^th, and after dropping them off that I got the call this his coworkers had found him.

I took the videos down initially, knowing that was in poor taste. But then, days later when I put up the selfie of us on my twitter page that went viral, I decided I may as well re-post the vides too. I wasn’t going to be able to make content for awhile and I was doing all of my phone things at once.

When someone comments, I try to diffuse it by admitting what they want me to deny. Yes, I posted nudes the day after my husband died. Yes, I am garbage. Yes, I am diabolical.

Sometimes they hear me out, and in this case JoeRoganDisciple actually apologized. But that’s not always how it goes.

It makes me want to try to explain. Do I say that I was a 20 year old alcoholic who had no support system? That I’d been thrust into adulthood with no net, raised by parents that could barely tolerate me, let alone offer any love or guiding force? My family were people I didn’t trust, who I couldn’t call for help.

How was I to know this charming man that seemed to love and adore me and wanted to know everything about me was someone I was supposed to stay away from? Does it matter that he was a manipulative narcissist even at age 24, and that the love bombing worked on me because I had never actually felt loved for who I was before? How much information is too much information on Twitter?

At first, it was the little things, we weren’t allowed to have paper towels, or pre-shredded cheese. We weren’t allowed to eat meat. For the environment. For our pocketbook. Then it was bigger things. We weren’t allowed to have a microwave. Or a television. Or a car.

For almost two years, we used metro transit and walked everywhere we went, through Minnesota winters with two toddlers. Sometimes a kindly neighbor would take pity on us and lend us their vehicle for the weekend, but for the most part, we walked. After 9 months, his father graciously offered to buy us a car, literally any car we wanted, there was no cap to his offer.

Dave chose a 20 year old Ford Minivan that had a VHS player. It was $2,000. He refused to accept a penny more. He would not allow any input on what car he chose, and no one got to test drive it but him.

After 6 months, the transmission went out, so we went back to walking and taking the bus. It took us 9 months until we could save up enough for the repair.

I received a visit from a dear college friend recently, someone who knew me before I met him. Who met him at the same time as me, in 2002. We talked about it, about what we were like back then. What he was like. I feel stupid admitting to her my young self didn’t know his behavior was abusive. Even though he was always a dick.

Everyone who knew him, knew that. I once bought him a book called How Not to Be A Dick and it was not a joke. He was an asshole. That was what I liked about him. That was what drew me to him.

She told me about a situation in her family where her family member is “financially abusing his wife.” I had never heard that phrase before, and when she said it, it jogged a memory for me.

It was 2019, I had been able to save up enough to fly to visit her. We were sitting in her car and talking about finance, something I thought she knew a great deal about, given how nice her home and new her car was.

I confessed that I didn’t have a credit card, that I had never had one, and that I had to save up cash to buy the plane ticket.

She looked at me with a mixture of horror and confusion. “What do you in case of emergencies?”

I didn’t tell her that we didn’t have a savings account, either. That we had checking for the house and a checking account for the store. We barely paid the mortgage and the rent most months. I was working a second job to try to make ends meet. Dave didn’t trust banks, he said they were evil. He said we didn’t need to have a credit score. When things got really bad, we went for payday loans with high interest payments and 30-day IOUs.

After that trip, I opened an online savings account, just in my name. I started putting $50 from my paycheck secretly into it. The next year, I got a credit card.

Him controlling all of our money did not seem out of the ordinary to me. Just like him deciding about our food or not having a car, I didn’t think of those things as manipulation, even if it did mean that I for years I had no way to visit family or friends.

Others could see it. Many times over the 20 years I spent at his side, strangers and friends alike approached me to tell me that he was a problem, that he was explosive, that he was scary, that he was controlling, I wrote them off and apologized for his outbursts. I considered it my job. I thought that was just what being a wife meant, you spend all of time apologizing for your husband’s.

When I finally opened my eyes to the fact that my relationship was abusive, my entire sense of reality crumbled. I had a panic attack on the side of the road after leaving his mother’s house.

It felt like I had been a fish in water my whole life who had suddenly been thrust into the air. From that second on, I could no longer stand to be in his presence. I couldn’t stand the way he spoke to me. I couldn’t believe it had taken me so long to realize that everyone who had told me about him was right. I couldn’t believe I had tolerated his abuse for so long.

I knew immediately I had to leave, I had to get out, for good. But I couldn’t. I was terrified. He had threatened to kill himself during every horrible fight for most of the prior decade. I wanted him to be safe.

I made mistakes when I left, and I readily admit it that. Unfortunately, I don’t know if there’s any right way to leave your explosive, violent, alcoholic husband.

I’m thankful that he, and everyone around us, knew that he was suicidal and wanted to help. I’m grateful to the friends who supported us, who took care of the cat and the house and watered the plants and helped him get into treatment. I’m so glad he checked into the hospital and I’m grateful that he stayed for 2 weeks, even though he had promised to stay longer. I’m glad that at least, he tried.

The time when he was safe in the hospital and I knew he was there were the most exhilarating and terrifying days of my life. Every day I went to the house and packed. I moved us, to two different AirBnbs. I found a house, I paid the deposit, I hired movers, I got an attorney and my divorce papers ready. I took care of the dogs. I did everything as fast as I could.

Every second I was in the house I was certain he would show up. I played music as loud as I could in my ears as I packed up 20 years of my life and carried away every single thing I thought I wanted to keep. I role played in my head what would happen if he showed up.

On the last day, he did.

Things didn’t go the way I planned. I wanted him to get the divorce papers in the hospital, where he was surrounded with staff. I wanted him to stay. But he couldn’t stand being there. Everyone was out to get him. The therapist hated him. He needed to come home to me. He was convinced he was going to come home and we would make up, and everything would be better. While I had frantically been packing every shred of the life I once knew, he was certain we were about to reunite.

-

I’ve shed much of that life since then. I’ve stopped hiding behind pseudonyms and started using my real name here and in my writing. With the record store closing recently, acquaintances from my past life have reached out. They find this page and dive in and read my archives, and then they do something I can’t stand. They feel compelled to reach out to tell me they’re sorry they didn’t know I was being abused.

It goes something like, “Sorry you went through that. I obviously did not know what was happening.”

I don’t know what to say. Me neither? Sorry for not telling you about my parts of life that I kept from even those closest to me? If you had tried to help me, I would have brushed you off, so I’m glad you didn’t know? I’m irked that I feel obligated to offer some sort of absolution, some halfhearted,“no worries, it’s ok!”

My college friend and I eat appetizers over mocktails in our old neighborhood. I am grateful to have friends who have known me through chapters of my life, relationships like sisterhoods that span 25+ years. We discuss the reality of being abused while not acknowledging that you’re a victim of abuse. Why do I have such an intense reaction when I feel like people feel bad for me?

“Maybe because he was like that?” She reminds me. The arguments in the hardware store parking lots. The backseats of police cars. He was always such an asshole. He was the victim in every story, he was convinced the world was out to get him. He had “beefs” with so many people we couldn’t count. People he refused to speak to, that he had cut out of his life dramatically.

Maybe the reason I feel terrified that people perceive me as a victim was because he was always pretending to be? Isn’t that a classic narcissistic abuse pattern?

She can say it. I’m still afraid if I say it aloud, it makes me a bad wife. That I’m betraying him by talking about being abused. We acknowledge that he was always an asshole. And that I thought I loved him anyway.

Sometimes I wish he was alive so I could tell him I never loved him. That we didn’t have a marriage, and then I feel remorse because it’s true. I am a bad wife. Why did I stay with him for twenty years if I didn’t want to be married to him? If it was so bad, why didn’t I leave?

I tell a friend I feel guilty for being bad at wifing. She reframes it for me, telling me I was never a wife, I was indentured servant he would occasionally rape. We both agree her statement is a little harsh, but she’s made her point. He controlled all of our money, everything I ate, what I was allowed to wear, who I was allowed to spend time with.

“You were never a wife.” I love my sagacious friend. “He got to you when you were 20. You never had a chance.”