10. Abuse by proxy

My ex was most likely a sociopath, but I am not an expert so feel free to examine it.

You want the psychological abuse or the physical? I’ll start with the mental abuse. That was actually the worst.

She was an expert at what is called Gaslighting, that is specifically she would try her best to convince me that I was losing my mind and she did pretty good at it.

She would objects in the house and then when I noticed would tell me they were never moved or moved weeks ago.

She would steal items of mine, hide them and then tell me that I was “losing it” as I looked all over the house for them. Things like my Ipod, medicine, personal journals etc.

We would meet new people and get along fine for a while and then suddenly they would treat me very differently. I was told this was because I was telling inappropriate jokes and weird stories. The truth was she would tell them I was seeing a psychiatrist. I was not seeing any health professional… nice one…

She would call me and then make stories up about what I said during the day. Like if I said I would call her at 5, she would insist that I said I would be there at five. Again I was “losing it”

There was lots more, but these were the best ones.

She loved to have super long “open talks” with me about my dreams, desires, what I felt bad about, what made me happy etc… and then take every single one of those things and do her best to destroy my confidence, shred my dreams etc… Over the years that was the worst. She found out every place I felt weak or bad and did her level best to exploit it.

This was also all done by keylogging everything on my PC, following me to and from work and accusing me of cheating on her pretty well daily…

Then of course the physical started about five years in. She called the cops the first time I defended myself. Defending myself consisted of me holding her arm from hitting me… and for that I was kicked out of the house, by the police. She let me come home about a week later.

It was pretty rough, no friends, family was far away and I was homeless for all intents and purposes. So hey, smart me went back…

A week later I was slugged in the face five or six times because I had actually gone out for a drink, by myself, on my birthday… I realized as she hit me, if I tried to stop her the cops would come back… and out I go. I learned later about a thing called abuse-by-proxy…

Long story short, I left about two weeks later…

My life has been great ever since. I still don’t open up fully to anyone though, they don’t need the ammo.

11. Caught her in a lie

I came home from work and my soon to be ex wife started throwing punches. We’d never hit each other, hell, we didn’t argue or say hurtful things (I didn’t anyway). She had filed for divorce, and had been on a women’s domestic abuse website for “advice”. She didn’t know I knew. She hit me in the face, and took another swing, and I caught her fist totally by luck. Was aiming for her wrist, because the first punch hurt more than I let on, but you know. Shouldnt have encouraged her to volunteer as a firefighter, she wouldn’t have been lifting weights, maybe my face wouldn’t have hurt so much? I forced her hand down to her side and told her, “We don’t hit each other here.”