Dear U,
You made many promises and you broke every single one of them. Willfully, remorselessly, shamelessly.
First you had to make sure I became financially dependent on you.
You were very persuasive. And I trusted you. Looking back at my naive self from 5 years ago, I feel sad and at the same time I would like to shake my younger self into an awareness I didn’t yet have. I had known you for many years before we became a couple. I had no reason, not to trust you. But I trusted you for all the wrong reasons. I trusted your words, expected your actions to naturally follow your words. Trusted that you would never want to hurt me. Hadn’t yet experienced the chasm between words and actions or the abyss of abuse. Does it matter now? Does it make it any easier to forgive myself that I said 'yes' to us, 5 years ago, and that my decision led me into a hellish nightmare?
None of this matters now.
I have suffered unimaginable emotional, verbal and psychological abuse at your side.
I was financially independent when we became a couple but changing my life and moving to an exotic location far away with you, giving up my network, my friends and family, created a dependency on you. This made me feel very uneasy and yes, dependent. I decided to talk to you freely and directly about what bothered me about this move. You were understanding and forthcoming, suggested that you provided me with a "structure" that gave me a certain financial independence.
Your unwavering commitment to us made it easy for me to trust in us and in you. You went out of your way to ease my doubts regarding my fears of being financially dependent on you in an exotic country. And I trusted you.
We moved halfway across the world together. I was excited. I rented out my house, I shipped my belongings and put the rest in storage. I gave up my life, as I had known it. I became dependent on you.
This was the moment everything changed.
The promised "financial structure", supposed to give me financial independence, was never set up. You made me fight for every dime. The promised joint account never became reality because you said that you "couldn't trust me with money". Your ex-wife became the most talked about person in our relationship, her way of "not constantly asking questions" and doing “what she was told” by you became the role model behavior you expected from me.
The moment my financial dependency became a fact, not just a theory, was the moment of your true self emerging from behind the mask of cordiality and understanding.
Once you dropped your mask, the persona breaking free from underneath was a bully, a liar, a cheater, a manipulator and sociopathic narcissist. I was constantly left with very little money in a very foreign country while you were traveling. Many times I couldn't pay the monthly car rental or groceries while you were away. I used up my own money and ran through my savings fast. That was a mistake. Instead of using my money to move back I ended up paying what needed to be paid. My head was spinning, trying to make sense of what was happening with you and with us, trying to reconcile the “new” you with the person I had known for years, the person I trusted. Before the move, you were financially generous and dependable. Our situation was solid financially: you had a great job, a generous remuneration and you still made me struggle and beg for money constantly.
The worst part was that my begging often ended with me in tears. Seeing me in this state of despair and self-pity transformed you into the meanest, cruelest person imaginable. Your speech became razor-sharp, cold, detached, condescending, abusive and threatening.
Before our move, you pretended to love the whole “me”, everything about me, what I stood for, what I aspired, what I dreamed of and envisioned. After the move, you belittled me, made fun of my dreams, pointed out my shortcomings and by comparing me to your ex-wife you made me feel less, unworthy and you devalued me constantly. My financial dependency made you cruel and stingy.
We were living in a beautiful house, had a gardener and house staff coming in almost every day and more often than not, I couldn't pay them. You insisted on keeping them because you were very concerned with appearances. I had to manage the payments with the money you gave me, even when I presented you with the hard facts and numbers. I tried to reason with you, argued that more money was needed to pay all of the weekly and monthly expenses. You started yelling at me, in the crudest, most abusive language, that I was a lazy shit, mistreating you horribly, that I was the most egotistical person in the world. Your hurtful speech, demeaning attitude and disrespectful behavior left me emotionally compromised, left me hollow and numb. Hurt doesn’t fully describe what your abuse did to me.
“Verbal cruelty affects your brain like physical pain.”– Dr. Kathleen Taylor.
You are a sociopath. I have learned a lot about your condition since then. I hadn't known anything about malignant narcissists, about their sociopathic behavior, their lack of empathy and inability to love. I have read and still read as much I can about Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and the dynamics of abusive relationships. It helps me tremendously in my healing process. Today, I'm a survivor. Yesterday, I was a victim.
As a victim, I enabled your behavior and made myself small and submissive, adapting to your abuse and learning to walk on eggshells. You were in total, complete control and you loved it. With my own money shrinking, I became more and more dependent, caught in a cycle I had no idea how to get out of. You created circumstances by moving us far away from everything I knew, isolating me and stripping me of vital resources, circumstances that left me reeling and grasping for something to hold on to. Often, too often, I held on to spurts of normal behavior you showed ocasionally, moments of affection and understanding, that proved over and over to be just that, moments, spurts, flashes of normalcy I craved and needed so desperately.
It took me long to realize and comprehend, that you weren’t my friend, you were my enemy. It took me long to accept that those rare moments of “normalcy” I held on to for dear life were in reality harbingers of more abuse and control to come. Whenever I felt safe and confided in you, you listened intently and turned around to use the knowledge you had gained against me. I learned the hard way that I had to protect myself against you.
Your financial abuse was the classic stick-and-carrot method. Whenever I came to a point that I was ready to give up on us, the fighting, the begging for money, you would suddenly grant me a wish you had denied before. Or you would give me money without me asking for it. This created false hope and was an excellent tool for control and submission. Again, I was caught in a cycle of finding excuses for your emotionally and verbally abusive behavior towards me. I put it down to stress, to your childhood, to trust issues. I decided to be extra careful to show you that you could trust me. To show you that I was loyal and understanding and forgiving. Unfortunately the abuse that followed, accompanied by lies on top of lies and more lies, crushed me again and even more so because I had opened up to you again.
It took me a long time to realize that you are who you are. No excuses. You choose to behave the way you do. You use money as a means to control. With every dime you give are strings attached, guilt and debt cemented, power manifested. You hate the submissive enabler of your money power play just as much as the argumentative warrior. You hate it when some of your dealings come to light because you operate in the darkness. It took me a long time to realize that there is a pattern to your behavior. The closer a person is to your inner circle, the more abuse she or he has to suffer. I was closest to you. You were especially hideous towards me behind closed doors, because there were no witnesses. When acquaintances of yours came up to me, telling me how lucky I was and how much you loved me, I cringed and felt like screaming. No one suspected the abuse I suffered.
It still makes me sad that I spent so much time trying to figure you out, trying to find a way to be with you, trying to show you that I was worthy and valuable, trying to prevent the abuse from happening. I excused and forgave unimaginable verbal, emotional and financial abuse. I let myself be held captive by your antics and your control. You made me feel powerless and I accepted it. I accepted your control and enabled your abuse. I learned to apologize for my money-begging, learned to apologize for doubting your decisions, apologize for being too emotional when the abusive abyss made me almost lose my mind.
At this point I should mention that your need for control by using mind tricks such as distortion of facts, lying and manipulating, ultimately dominated every situation you found yourself in. You were more careful but in the end, colleagues and bosses caught up with your lies and manipulation and you lost your job. Unbeknownst to me you had also spend every dime you owned in crazy high-risk financial operations, all of them ending in a complete loss. You were stranded with nothing and I was still part of the whole set-up, reeling to find a way out. The whole debacle in a country far away had left me financially compromised and my hopes to come to an understanding with you dwindled with all of your money and your job lost. I tried everything to help you recover from the loss, rallying to build up your self-esteem and support you emotionally when you went to job interviews. I should have known that you blamed the financial disaster on everyone and everything but yourself. Mostly me.
I had tried to find work there, tried to revive my freelance gigs from afar but my emotional and psychological state was also compromised, every rejection send me spiraling into despair. An almost catatonic numbness set in, I was watching my life unravel further and further without stepping up. Now I know that I experienced cognitive dissonance.
The numbness helped me to prevent you from damaging me further. You blamed me for everything: I should have immersed myself in your financial dealings, should have stepped up to tell you not to engage economically. Suffice to say, I tried to do all of that and more. You made every single decision alone, in secret, withholding information from me, never honest, never open, never talking things over before deciding to invest your money. You had to be in control. And I asked too many questions, remember?
Making another person, let alone the person you claim to 'love", beg for money, then abuse her, making her feel small and worthless, is despicable. Using her financially and emotionally compromised state in your favor to establish a pattern of fear and anxiety, control and manipulation, is evil.
All I did was trust you. All you did was crush me.
However:
"We are stronger in places that we've been broken". - Ernest Hemingway.
Watch me soar, dear U.
