In most areas of your life you are competent and confident. You do an excellent job at work, and you are more than skilled at working the home budget, the kids, and every challenging chore in-between. Your friends adore you because you are loving, compassionate, and thoughtful. Your boss loves you because you are on time, smart as a whip and innovative. He/She can depend on you for accurate information, and knows you are backing them in a pinch. You are a great cook, a great mother, and you keep yourself and your family clean and fit. You are also very beautiful! The truth is you are a very good person. A person with true heart and a true sense of reality, and for the most part, truly loved. Your virtue of extreme loyalty is commendable and dangerous!
So then, why is it lately that you are afraid to go home; afraid to pull in to your own drive-way? Why don't you want to put the key in the door anymore? Why does a huge part of you want to run away as far as you can, and never look back? Why don't you run? Why is your stomach in knots, not knowing which personality your husband will be exhibiting today? Will he be drunk? Will he start lying again, and expect you to swallow it? Will he taunt you and callously insult you, like he's been doing so often lately? Will he laugh with an evil tone while he obviously gets his pleasure from your discomfort and emotional pain? Or will he be “Mr. Nice Guy”? It's so unpredictable anymore. He may bring you flowers and wine, and then call you an alcoholic if you drink it! You won't possibly put the flowers in the correct vase, and besides, you don't really even want them, because you have come to know that even an act of seeming kindness with this person, is a venomous strike, yet to be unveiled. Somehow, he will turn on you soon.
Years ago, he was a charming prince. He made you feel like a princess. Everything you did or said was doted on, and complimented. Your cooking. The way you clean. How good you smell. How smart you are. How beautiful, how kind, how much fun. Often you would hear how you are the only one he's ever loved, and how he can not imagine life without you. You were his number one reason for living. He wanted you in his sight and by his side every moment because “he loved you so,” and “missed you when you're gone”
A little while into the relationship, he started showing outward signs of jealousy when anyone but him, took a bit of your time. Whether it be the kids, your mom and dad, your boss, or your friends and other family members…it could even be the family pet! His behavior began to restrain and confine you, and you allowed it, because he was always saying how much he loved you, and how he just was jealous because you are so special. Then, he would take you on some romantic get-away, and take your mind off of his “brattatude”. Not long into this wonderful trip, you find yourself being blamed for everything that in his mind is going wrong. The fact is, he did no planning at all, but you are the one who “got us lost” “ran us out of gas” “forgot to make reservations and the motel is full”…this will go on until, if there were any good feelings about this trip, and hope of a happy time, it is soon diminished to anger. Every time you even attempt to defend yourself, you are put down psychologically and emotionally. You are now miserable, and want to go home. Then he will ask “what's the matter with you?” and make you see red. In the early stages, before you really hate him, you will answer these questions and defend yourself. Later, you will stop talking to him.
You have given up years of your life to this relationship. As time went by you saw your friends disappear, your mom and dad hate him because he treats you terrible, and although people gently tried to nudge you away from him, something made you stay. YOU don't even know what that something is. You were capable of living independently, prior to him,and had so much ahead of you. This man, you have loved and been loyal to, (maybe for even 20 years), has literally destroyed what you dreamed of in life. The worst part is, he has destroyed it without a wink or twitch of conscience. It has been all about “HIM” from day one, and he was so clever to make you think it was about you, even a teeny bit.
